People Who Have Attained Things-Daily Meditation 3.7.24
Today’s Quotation:
People who have attained things worth having in this world have worked while others idled, have persevered when others gave up in despair, have practiced early in life the valuable habits of self-denial, industry, and singleness of purpose. As a result, they enjoy later in life the success so often erroneously attributed to good luck. -Grenville Kleiser
Today’s Meditation:
There’s very little in this world that can substitute for persistence. It’s almost impossible to achieve anything without it, for very few of our most outstanding achievements happen. We’ve all read stories of books turned down by many publishers or ideas rejected by hundreds before someone finally realizes their potential. Colonel Sanders tried to license his recipe for Kentucky Fried Chicken to over 1,000 establishments before he found a buyer.
Athletes make their sports look easy because of the thousands of hours of work that they’ve devoted to them. A good singer seems to hit every note effortlessly only because he or she has spent countless hours practicing, learning, and practicing some more. When they become successful, it’s easy to call them lucky or to forget the amount of work that they’ve put into their chosen field, but the fact is that they kept on with what they wanted to do and didn’t give up.
Giving up is easy. When we’ve tried something for so long without success, it’s a great feeling to put it behind us and not worry anymore about why something isn’t working. Getting that stress out of our lives can be a very liberating feeling. But if it’s something that we feel deeply about, that we know is important and strongly related to who we are, giving up can leave a hole, a space inside ourselves that possibly can’t be filled with anything else.
If you keep on, you will meet with success. The level of success may not be what you might have envisioned—your website may not have a million hits a day, or your business may not grow into a nationwide chain—but you will meet with success. Sometimes, modest successes are much more fulfilling and much better for our spirits than the so-called “major” successes, which come with a huge workload and many more responsibilities.
Questions to ponder:
1. Can you think of something you’ve given up on and regretted leaving behind? Why didn’t you persevere? What important factors led you to give up on that particular thing?
2. Why is it often so hard to keep going in the face of “failure”?
3. How can we change our perspective to make what seem to be significant setbacks into minor ones that don’t stop us from keeping on?
For further thought:
The successful person is the individual who forms the habit of doing what the failing person doesn’t like to do.-Donald Riggs
If you missed our last Daily Meditation, it is here.
