Do you like
this article?
We send out articles like this one in our free weekly newsletter. The newsletter is written to motivate, inspire, educate, and entertain you.
To sign up, send us an email to Subscribe@TomorrowsEdge.net with the words "free motivational newsletter" in the subject line. We will be happy to add you to the list.
answers these questions
and more
Please tell your friends about our website...
Getting Back Up
On That Horse Again
Sometimes, for whatever reason, we give up and quit. Sometimes, we run out of resources or start up capital. Sometimes, our children, parents, friends, and loved ones need us during their time of crisis and we gladly put our dreams aside to rush to their aid. Sometimes, we are simply burned out and no longer feel motivated to take action despite still seeing the validity of the objective. Sometimes, we do not have the skills, education, or credentials that we need. Sometimes, we simply cannot do it alone and help is nowhere in sight. Sometimes, political powers make it very difficult for us to accomplish our goals because our aspirations conflict with their ideology. Sometimes, our competitors succeed at sabotaging our efforts. And sometimes, we feel like we do not have the strength to pick ourselves up one more time to keep moving forward, so we decide to just stay down for awhile while we catch our breath and regroup. We suspect that someday, somehow we will get back up on that horse again, despite feeling that right now in this moment, we just cannot go on anymore.
This article is not about how to solve the problems and remove the roadblocks that cause you to want to give up and quit. This is about giving yourself permission to get back up, dust yourself off, and make another go at it. All too often, once we give up and quit, we assign the “loser” or “failure” labels to ourselves and then assume that role in society. It is a noble place in society, the person who gave it a good try and failed. We get to hold our head up as one of those people who had the nerve to at least try compared to those who never do. And we can smugly tell others who follow in our footsteps where to watch out for pitfalls and why they too should expect to fail. Thus telling ourselves that we are also using our hard earned wisdom to assist others and to ease others from landing as hard as we did when we made our own face plant. Yes, there is the nagging sense that we are indeed losers and failures, but there are enough small benefits that it is not so uncomfortable that we actually have to take action and move away from having tried and failed. After all, there is no shame in trying your best and then failing. Right?
For all the comfort we get from our peers and dear old Mom telling us that we are
still lovable even when we fail, losing still haunts us. Life is never stagnant.
At some point, circumstances change. Sometimes, they change in our favor and sometimes
they don’t. When things get worse, we shrug it off and reconfirm our choice to give
up and quit. But when things get better, when competitors leave the market, when
political ideologies change, when creative new ideas come to us, when new technologies
make it easier for us to wear more hats and not have to hire help, when it looks
like our old dreams and goals become more do-
At this point, the question is, “Do I dare to hope? Or do I surrender to my fears that things will probably fall apart again?” At this point, it is easy to weigh the pros and cons, play around with statistics and probability analyses, and to fantasize success while also visualizing failure. This is all good and well. One should never make big decisions lightly or without all of the relevant facts on hand.
Sometimes, making the decision is easy. You dreamt of being a rock star when you
were a teenager. Now, with home recording equipment and the Internet, it is possible
to launch your music career and self-
It can also play out the other way, and saying yes to resurrecting your dream is
easy. You wanted to start your own business. You created an excellent well thought
out business plan, ironed out all of the details, analyzed the market’s likely response
to your goods and services, and you have the expertise, confidence, and tenacity
to make great things happen. However, you could not raise the start up capital.
No matter how brilliant your business proposal and no matter how enthusiastic your
sales pitch, you could not find an investor who believed in both you and your dream.
Then along comes an old friend from high school you haven’t seen in years and not
only do they have the ability to finance your idea, they are excited at the opportunity
to co-
But what about when favorable circumstances are not overwhelmingly favorable, but just “more favorable”? Or when your competition leaves the company, but that does not guarantee you the next job promotion? Or when creative new ideas might work, but are not guaranteed to work? Or when you have acquired enough new knowledge to know what you did wrong last time, but not much more than that? Or when some wave of “change is in the air” washes over you and you just feel motivated again? Or when nothing at all has changed other than you feel deeply called to try again because the dream haunts you and will not let you quit with peace of mind? Then what? How do you give yourself permission to hope again when the hard concrete evidence validating the logic behind rekindled hope does not exist?
To this I give you three questions to ponder. One or more may apply in your personal situation.
Number 1) Let’s say that accomplishing your goal brings good into the world. For
example, you are going to become a teacher, write music, run for office, cure Cancer,
or some other dream that is not completely self-
Ask yourself, “If I work really hard struggling for years to bring my little gifts to the world, and it only helps two people, was it worth it?”
This question was posed to me by a well-
Find how this line of questioning would apply to your own dream and ask yourself that same question.
Number 2) Ask yourself this question, “Who else would you be?”
Is this a dream that holds a piece of your soul? Are you at the very core of your being a musician, artist, writer, singer, leader, civil rights advocate, politician, chef, doctor, etc. For some people, a dream is just a dream. For others, it is about becoming who they already were. Look at someone like Oprah, she majored in journalism and wanted to become “Mary Tyler Moore”. She did not necessarily have the goal of succeeding at the level that she did, but at the core of who she is – is the personality that needed to educate, inspire, uplift, and entertain people. She simply became who she already was. The same is true for me; I was never not a wordsmith who meant well when offering unsolicited advice to anyone who would listen. At times when life required that I put my dream on the backburner for a while, I missed “being” the kind of person who goes after this kind of a dream despite the odds, more than I did the actual writing, speech giving, or any other part of the actual “doing.” And so, it may be with you. Are you able to spend the rest of your life NOT being who and what you really are? Can you say no to a music career because deep down it is fun, but not really something that haunts you and owns you? Does the music call to you, never leaving you alone, always screaming to be birthed through you? Then, who else would you be?
Number 3) If I could promise you that you would only fail two more times and that on the third attempt, you would achieve everything your heart desires and more. If I had a crystal ball and could promise you this without question, would you do it? Would you put yourself through two more failures in order to get to that “third times a charm” place in the universe?
I often hear from aspiring writers who are feeling quite discouraged because they have been turned down by a handful of perspective publishers. They need to ask themselves, “What is the average number of rejection letters the average unknown writer receives before a publisher finally says yes to them?” I remember at one time hearing that it was something like 27, and telling myself, “Okay, well I need to hurry up and blow through the first 26 rejections so I can get to that 27th one who will say yes.” Of course, we all want to be one of the lucky ones who gets a ‘yes’ sooner than what normally happens for the average writer. However, if you go into the whole process prepared and steeled for 26 rejection letters, it makes it a lot easier than if you go into it saying, “I applied to three and got rejected all three times, so I must not be any good at writing.”
Mulling over these questions does not guarantee you success as you contemplate once again giving hope a chance, but if you are on the edge and thinking that you just might take one more leap of faith, they can help you to remember why you wanted to fly in the first place. And of course, there is my old favorite from the Talmud, “If not now, when?”
Please help us to spread the word about
our website. Email this article to a friend,
bookmark it, or “like” it on Facebook. Just
click on the “share” button at the top of
the page for a list of ideas for how to
share this article with your loved ones.