PERSISTENCE
August 15th, 2018
I realize that in life I’ve always been quick to lose hope when I didn’t have an answer to a problem. If I lost too many times at a video game a completely dropped it and picked up something else. When I didn’t know how to solve a math problem, I stopped trying to solve it and would blame the teacher for messing up on the problem. I would always lose hope too early. And quite honestly, I wouldn’t feel bad about it. I didn’t feel like I was being a quitter. I just stopped thinking I was going to win, so, I lost interest in the task. Now maybe it wasn’t important for me to keep on playing the video game until I won, however I did quit on situations that could have taught me valuable lessons on persistence and confidence when I was young.
As I look back, I notice that a lot of those times I quit before I could win was because of two reasons. (1) I had no plan, and (2) I was embarrassed to keep losing in front of the people around me. To be clear, both of these reasons are not good enough to justify quitting, losing hope, or losing interest. They were for good enough for me though. So back then I would rather just do nothing rather than risk another loss. It was just terrible for my confidence. And it wasn’t until I grew older that I recognized the pattern I was living by. I figured out that I had low self-esteem, and that was the reason I was scared to lose. I always defined myself by the losses. My answer to my revelation was to study confidence and find out how to build it. It was a journey, but I ended up dotting all the i’s and crossing all the t’s…except for one.
I didn’t have many examples of what it looked like to be confident in my life – a lot of examples on how to be cocky – however, not confident. But there was one man that caught my attention as I ended my teenage years. That man was my dad. Yeah, the one that birthed me…go figure. It took 19 years of my life to see the level of persistence this man possessed. I don’t know how confident my dad really is in his head, however his actions were all I needed to see in order to be inspired. This is a 65-year-old man that has been working the night shift for my entire life, all while being the head pastor of our church. He would leave the house on a Saturday evening, come back 6am on a Sunday morning, then take a quick nap before getting ready to go to church and preach in front of the entire congregation. Not to mention he would also preach ever Wednesday, every other Friday, and council members with their personal issues almost 24/7. He’s been doing it for decades.
Persistence. There is something about it that doesn’t care about how many times you lose. It only cares about getting up in the morning everyday. It only cares about progression, or repetition at the very least. It could care less about what people think. It is more concerned with what you believe you are capable of. If you have trouble with low self-esteem or confidence in general, when the worse comes to worse, try being persistent.
-E
PERSISTENCE
August 15th, 2018
I realize that in life I’ve always been quick to lose hope when I didn’t have an answer to a problem. If I lost too many times at a video game a completely dropped it and picked up something else. When I didn’t know how to solve a math problem, I stopped trying to solve it and would blame the teacher for messing up on the problem. I would always lose hope too early. And quite honestly, I wouldn’t feel bad about it. I didn’t feel like I was being a quitter. I just stopped thinking I was going to win, so, I lost interest in the task. Now maybe it wasn’t important for me to keep on playing the video game until I won, however I did quit on situations that could have taught me valuable lessons on persistence and confidence when I was young.
As I look back, I notice that a lot of those times I quit before I could win was because of two reasons. (1) I had no plan, and (2) I was embarrassed to keep losing in front of the people around me. To be clear, both of these reasons are not good enough to justify quitting, losing hope, or losing interest. They were for good enough for me though. So back then I would rather just do nothing rather than risk another loss. It was just terrible for my confidence. And it wasn’t until I grew older that I recognized the pattern I was living by. I figured out that I had low self-esteem, and that was the reason I was scared to lose. I always defined myself by the losses. My answer to my revelation was to study confidence and find out how to build it. It was a journey, but I ended up dotting all the i’s and crossing all the t’s…except for one.
I didn’t have many examples of what it looked like to be confident in my life – a lot of examples on how to be cocky – however, not confident. But there was one man that caught my attention as I ended my teenage years. That man was my dad. Yeah, the one that birthed me…go figure. It took 19 years of my life to see the level of persistence this man possessed. I don’t know how confident my dad really is in his head, however his actions were all I needed to see in order to be inspired. This is a 65-year-old man that has been working the night shift for my entire life, all while being the head pastor of our church. He would leave the house on a Saturday evening, come back 6am on a Sunday morning, then take a quick nap before getting ready to go to church and preach in front of the entire congregation. Not to mention he would also preach ever Wednesday, every other Friday, and council members with their personal issues almost 24/7. He’s been doing it for decades.
Persistence. There is something about it that doesn’t care about how many times you lose. It only cares about getting up in the morning everyday. It only cares about progression, or repetition at the very least. It could care less about what people think. It is more concerned with what you believe you are capable of. If you have trouble with low self-esteem or confidence in general, when the worse comes to worse, try being persistent.
-E