Persistence - one step at a time.

Have you ever felt despair, desolation, sadness, frustration, anger, hopelessness? Good, that means you are alive! Most of us have felt one or all of the above at a given moment in life, or every day for a while ...There is nothing wrong with that. What matters is what you do with those feelings and how you respond to them. When faced with loss, challenges and change, we are presented with the biggest opportunity to find out who we really are and the stuff we´re made of.

I don´t have a “holier than thou” outlook, nor do I believe that suffering is the pathway to heaven. I can affirm that the many challenges I have faced in life and how I responded (and respond) to them have taught me a lot about me. I know that even if I lose ground temporarily in the face of adversity, I don´t give up. Rejection, loss, bad news … does temporarily bring me down. I´m human! But it does not pin me down. I know that persistence pays, and that even when I may believe everything is lost, in fact nothing is lost. I look inside and see how much strength and compassion I have gained and then I get a second wind, and keep on going.
Because I have a track record of getting up and dusting myself off after every fall, I believe in myself. Not always, not every second of the day, but for the most part, I do. The biggest favor we can do ourselves is to be persistent. It is the only way to overcome obstacles, to achieve goals and to gain self-respect. For some people, it is the only way to live.
What have your biggest challenges taught you about yourself?

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