One of the critical skills for ongoing success is the ability to bounce back from adversity. Sooner or later in life everyone experiences failure, disappointment, setbacks, or the desire to keep on keeping on.
Over the years I have had my share of failures as well as successes. Failing doesn’t make you a failure. Achieving a success doesn’t make you a success. Many people have hit bottom, only to climb out and achieve greatness, and many people have done great things only to end up broke, alone and without any lasting feeling of accomplishment.
Success and failure are neutral concepts. What makes either of them positive or negative in life is not the event, circumstance or situation but what is done with them along the path of life. No one that I have ever met has had a life filled with nothing but failure or success. Resilience is the ability to keep coming back, again and again and again. No matter how many times life throws you a curve or brings you to your knees, you try again - you try something new, something different, or something old in a new way. You refuse to give in or up. Here are a few ideas to consider when you feel like quitting:
1. It is temporary.
2. You need it to learn a valuable lesson.
3. You need to be softened by life.
4. You need to give your life more integrity or character.
5. You need to learn to be an example for others.
6. You need to rid yourself of some arrogance or ignorance.
7. You need to grow in some area of your life.
8. You need to learn to laugh at yourself.
9. You need to learn to live in the present moment.
10. You need to learn to take life less seriously.
I am a testimony to resilience. If I can accomplish what I have in my career having been brought to my knees again and again with failure, disappointment, and more problems than any one person should have - then you too - regardless of your current station in life or circumstances - can rise again. All you have to do is reach inside and find the courage, strength, stamina, attitudes, self-belief, and self-confidence and rekindle your desire for what you believe you can do and will do.
Hang on to your dream, no matter how big it might seem to you. And don’t let others convince you that you can’t do it, won’t do it or shouldn’t do it. Be true to yourself and your destiny. You have everything you need, right now, inside of you, to carry on. All you have to do is do it.