Life is not about one obstacle, but many. What’s required of us is not some shortsighted focus on a single facet of a problem, but simply a determination that we will get to where we need to go, somehow, someway, and nothing will stop us. We will overcome every obstacle – and there will be many in life – until we get there. Persistence is an action. Perseverance is a matter of will. One is energy. The other, endurance.
If your nerve holds, then nothing really did “happen” – our perception made sure it was nothing of consequence.
The market was inherently unpredictable and often vicious –.
We whine and complain and mope when things won’t go our way. We’re crushed when what we were “promised” is revoked – as if that’s not allowed to happen. Instead of doing much about it, we sit at home and play video games or travel or worse, pay for more school with more loan debt that will never be forgiven. And then we wonder why it isn’t getting any better.
Welcome to the source of most of our problems down here on Earth. Everything is planned down to the letter, then something goes wrong and the first thing we do is trade in our plan for a good ol’ emotional freak-out. Some of us almost crave sounding the alarm, because it’s easier than dealing with whatever is staring us in the face.
Thus, the question for astronauts was not How skilled a pilot are you, but Can you keep an even strain? Can you fight the urge to panic and instead focus only on what you can change? On the task at hand? Life is really no different. Obstacles make us emotional, but the only way we’ll survive or overcome them is by keeping those emotions in check – if we can keep steady no matter what happens, no matter how much external events may fluctuate.
We can go around or under or backward. We can decide that momentum and defeat are not mutually exclusive – we can keep going, advancing, even if we’ve been stopped in one particular direction.
Don’t let the negativity in, don’t let those emotions even get started. Just say: No, thank you. I can’t afford to panic. This is the skill that must be cultivated – freedom from disturbance and perturbation – so you can focus your energy exclusively on solving problems, rather than reacting to them.
When a man knows he is to be hanged in a fortnight, it concentrates his mind wonderfully. – DR. JOHNSON.
This is also confidence. Which needs neither congratulations nor glory in which to revel, because it is an honest understanding of our strengths and weakness that reveals the path to a greater glory: inner peace and a clear mind.
People learn from their failures. Seldom do they learn anything from success.” It’s why the old Celtic saying tells us, “See much, study much, suffer much, that is the path to wisdom.
Our actions can be constrained, but our will can’t be. Our plans – even our bodies – can be broken. But belief in ourselves? No matter how many times we are thrown back, we alone retain the power to decide to go once more. Or to try another route. Or, at the very least, to accept this reality and decide upon a new aim.
What you face right now could, should, and can be such a path. Wisdom or ignorance? Ego is the swing vote.
We don’t control the barriers or the people who put them there. But we control ourselves – and that is sufficient.
Once you start attacking an obstacle, quitting is not an option.
The founder of the universe, who assigned to us the laws of life, provided that we should live well, but not in luxury. Everything needed for our well-being is right before us, whereas what luxury requires is gathered by many miseries and anxieties. Let us use this gift of nature and count it among the greatest things.
No one should be ashamed at changing his mind – that’s what the mind is for. “A foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds,” Emerson said, “adored by little statesmen and philosophers and divines.
Just don’t lie to yourself by conflating emoting about a problem and dealing with it. Because they are as different as sleeping and waking.
Live on in your blessings, your destiny’s been won. But ours calls us on from one ordeal to the next. – VIRGIL.
You can always remind yourself: I am in control, not my emotions. I see what’s really going on here. I’m not going to get excited or upset.