Here is an excerpt from my book, SEVEN STEPS TO INNER POWER, where I discuss determination:
Once you articulate your goal in specific terms, be consistent in your determination to achieve it. Here’s the thing about determination: it works only when you put it to work. Let’s say you paid a tailor one thousand dollars in advance to produce evening clothes to wear to a special event. This event will never happen again, and the clothes are designed for this one evening. Will you go to pick up your new clothes even if it’s raining heavily? Yes. Will you go if you’re angry about getting a late start because the stew boiled over in your kitchen? Yes. Will you go if you find one of the streets on the way is blocked by construction? Yes – you’ll take a detour. Will you continue even if the freeway traffic is totally stopped and you have to sit for two hours? Yes. What will you do when you arrive at the tailor’s shop right after he has hung up his “closed” sign? You’ll bang on the door until he lets you in.
When you’re looking for a new job or considering another major step in your life, do you have the same determination? Where does all this determination go after a few rejections? Where does it go when, after more failures than you expected, you feel afraid and dejected? Are your new clothes really so much more deserving of your determination than you are?
When we get discouraged, we can make all sorts of excuses. Don’t allow that to be the case for you. People who don’t have arms but really want to paint learn how to paint with a brush in their mouth or they use their feet. They don’t let the fact that they don’t have arms stop them. No matter what, they find a way. People who have no legs still run and ski, don’t they? They use prosthetics. No one can stop them from doing what they love. Now think about what you may have used as an excuse not to follow through on your dreams. You may have even called it an obstacle. But is it really an obstacle – or an excuse?
