Learning to ride a bike may not be as demanding as learning to drive a car, but both require that you believe you can. Every step needs some degree of faith and confidence in yourself if you really want to hit your target.
What are the things that you still want to do or achieve? What are your targets for 2017, for the next five or ten years? A good farmer does not just scatter seeds. He prepares the soil. A wise man who plans to cut a tree spends time sharpening his axe. How about you? Whatever the kind of endeavor, you must prepare yourself and the tools you need. You have to make the necessary adjustments.
Some preparations involve sacrifices of different kinds. Miss Universe candidates do not eat as much as they want.
Students who work on their theses and review for licensure exams have less time for rest and recreation. OFWs deprive themselves of many things just to secure the welfare and future of their families.
“No pain, no gain.” You have to persevere in order to create the reality that you want. “The heights by great men reached and kept were not attained by sudden flight, but they, while their companions slept, were toiling upward in the night” (Henry Wadsworth Longfellow). Sometimes the results are not close to the target, but things could have been less desirable if you hadn’t persevered.
Now, perseverance is not something that people learn in a wink of an eye. Help children believe in themselves, do their own school assignments, clean up their mess, review for their quizzes/major exams, and sacrifice for a few of the things they want. They need to realize that things require time and effort. Allow them to fail, commit mistakes and begin again. It’s impossible to expect them to persevere when they become young adults if everything was served to them for decades.
French physicist Marie Curie who discovered polonium and radium with her husband said, “Life is not easy for any of us. But what of that? We must have perseverance and above all confidence in ourselves. We must believe that we are gifted for something and that this thing must be attained.”
Marilyn Arayata: inspirational author, columnist and speaker, your partner in preventing bullying, depression and suicide. E-mail [email protected]. Like the Hope Boosters Facebook Page for nuggets of hope and inspiration.
(Marilyn C. Arayata)