Wednesday Words of Wisdom #125
I find myself sitting and staring at my baby daughter a lot these days.
She’s a delightful little character when she isn’t testing the full extent of her vocal capacity through the medium of screaming.
I could watch her wriggle and squirm, laugh and smile all day long.
We had her on her little play gym the other day and we were watching her as she did battle with imaginary foes and for the first time in her tiny existence she reached out and took a swipe at one of the toys hanging from the frame.
She’d never done that before. In fact, before that day, she hadn’t really paid them much attention.
But today she struck out with intent and purpose and she was quite visibly pleased each and every time she made contact with the bright and noisy apparatus.
She was developing. Evolving. Growing and learning.
Over the coming weeks, months and years she’ll continue to develop and she’ll continue to do things for the first time and learn new skills by the boatload.
We’ll be there every step of the way encouraging her and teaching her, making sure that she learns from failed attempts and stays the course so that she eventually develops said skill.
We don’t laugh at babies when they attempt to walk and fail at first.
We don’t ridicule a child learning to ride a bike, we encourage them to try again.
We don’t let a child learning to read just give up because its difficult at first.
So what happens to us as we age and we stop applying this logic in our own adult lives?
When we come across a challenging situation do we give up the ghost?
When we struggle with some element of our lives do we let it define us as a failure?
When do we decide to change the rules and dictate that effort is no longer an option?
Think back on all of the things that you first couldn’t do but then learned through dedicated practice and effort.
There will be more than you can count, more than you will remember.
Each and every time you stuck to your guns and you made the choice that the momentary discomfort of trying and failing was less than the lasting pain of quitting altogether.
We would do well to take a lesson from our youth.
There’s an ancient proverb the goes, ‘Fall down seven times, get up eight.’
I like that.
Remember, you’re only finished when the job is done or you quit and you’re only beaten when you quit.
I’m looking at all my Heroes and I don’t see a single quitter among you.
Embrace your inner child, take back that adventurous spirit and put all of your efforts into success.
I know you can do it.
Do you?