All About You — Day 28: Never, Never, Never Give Up!
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[For “Day 27: Work Smarter AND Harder,” click here.]
Why not give up? Isn’t it stubborn or unreasonable to keep trying after some point in time? Doesn’t it make sense to give up after, say, a thousand times, or, at the outset 10,000 times, which some say Thomas Edison did to invent the long-burning light bulb? And, he had a laboratory full of hundreds of people working on those experiments for him!
Should we really never, ever give up, under any circumstances? What is the benefit of that kind of thinking, anyway? Isn’t that a lot like banging our heads against the wall—just plain crazy? And, isn’t that just wasting our lives?
It’s not anything like banging our heads against the wall or wasting our lives if we are pursuing our burning desires! And, it never makes sense to give up—even if you have to try it more than 10,000 times—as long as you don’t repeat the same mistakes, as Edison made sure his assistants were careful not to do during each of their painstaking and carefully documented experiments. They were nothing if not methodical! Every experiment that didn’t work let them cross off one more from the list of thousands of possibilities they had to try before they could finally succeed.
NEVER, NEVER, NEVER GIVE UP!
GIVING UP v. LIVING TO FIGHT ANOTHER DAY
What is the difference between giving up and living to fight another day? Giving up is surrender or forfeiture of your dream. You stop dreaming. You stop believing in your dream. When you no longer believe it’s possible to attain your dream, a big part of you dies along with it. That part is the most magical part of us—like when we were kids and believed in the possibility of all things suggested to us. We were so excited to see magic tricks, special effects, and every imaginable show of human excellence, whether in sports, entertainment, the arts, or science. Why? Because they filled us with wonder at all the marvelous choices the world still held out to us! We just knew there was so much more cool stuff out there for us to discover.
Living to fight another day is accepting a temporary setback as nothing but that—a temporary setback. It’s stopping what you’re doing temporarily to regroup, gather your strength and your thoughts, rework your plan, and muster up everything it takes to go at it again with full force as soon as conditions permit. That’s not giving up. That’s the opposite of letting your dream die. That’s protecting a flickering flame from being completely snuffed out when it starts to rain—keeping your eye on that flame the whole time to make sure it doesn’t go out—then fanning that flame to a roaring blaze again as soon as the clouds lift and the wood dries enough again.
BURNING DESIRES ARE NEVER A WASTE OF TIME
What if we chase our dreams all our lives and still never reach them? Isn’t that a waste of an entire lifetime? No. If it’s truly your burning desire, then the hot pursuit of it—of doing everything you can to make it come true—is a pleasure so profound, so complete in and of itself, that the actual attaining of it is almost anti-climactic.
When did you experience the most happiness/pleasure/joy from a trip to Disneyland—or wherever your favorite place was—when you were a kid and could get terribly excited about such things and could look forward to them for weeks: (1) during the endless days you spent imagining all the fun you’d have there; (2) the moment you got there; or, (3) when it was all over and you were leaving?
How about as an adult enjoying your favorite food? Are you happiest: (1) thinking about it and imaging how great it’ll taste before you take your first bite; (2) right after you take your first bite; or, (3) after you’ve finished the whole thing?
Would you dismiss all your childhood daydreams about Disneyland as wasted days, weeks, and months? Or, the countless times you hungrily anticipated your favorite food? Of course not! The very experience of waiting for what you love so much made the actual fulfillment of your desire that much more worthwhile. Without the burning desire, you’ll have no real excitement, either, for anything you do get in life.
So, what would you rather have: A lifetime’s worth of chasing your burning desire—believing all the time that you’re going to get it and having a blast because you are putting all your heart, mind, and body into it—but, for whatever reason, your time on this planet runs out before it happens; or, you never go for your burning desire and settle, instead, on staying focused only on the things you think you can safely achieve in this life by aiming well below your own potential?
When all is said and done, how do you want to go? I’d rather die trying to make all my dreams come true and loving every minute of it—just as I am doing now—than slowly kill every creative, child-like wonder in me I’ve ever had by going back to my six-figure legal job and towing that line. I’m having a blast! How about you?
TO BE CONTINUED …
This is going to be an adventurous journey into our past, present, and future lives. None of us can be prepared for what we might find along the way. So, just sit back and enjoy the ride! Also, I hope at least some of you brave souls will share your answers, insights, and revelations in the comments below for everyone’s benefit!
When you’re done, collect your answers and keep them in a safe place. I recommend a diary. It makes a precious gift to someone you love, especially you!
[For “Day 29: Always Go Back to the Drawing Board,” click here.]
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