Today as I was throwing the ball to Shiloh I noticed how she running past and missing it, then circling back and scrambling for it…I was taken by how persistent she was at picking it up and getting it back to me.
I wanted to ask you…
How persistent are you in your life when you are doing something that is challenging or don’t know that well? Are you persistent? Do you keep going, keep trying or do you tend to get frustrated and give up?
I know for me sometimes when things don’t come real easy, I do get frustrated and don’t want to keep going…for me that was golf…I may pick it up again someday, but that was a tough one.
Persistence is really what it is all about. Malcolm Gladwell talks about the 10,000 hours it takes to become an expert in his book, “Outliers.” Some things aren’t going to be easy at the beginning and they aren’t going to flow.
The flow comes when you are persistent, when you keep going. These days, I notice with eleven year old my daughter, that it’s all about immediate gratification. If she is not good at something right away, sometimes she wants to give up and stop trying.
If she feels something is hard, I hear, “Oh it’s so hard, so hard”. I’m teaching her to break or chunk it down, so it feels more manageable. I want her to realize that things aren’t as hard as they seem, we often make it bigger in our heads. That’s where persistence comes in and maybe I can look at this a different way and shift my thoughts around it or make it flow better.
That’s my message; it’s about persistence, flow and moving forward even when things are challenging because that is when the work begins. If it comes too easy, what’s the fun in that! When we are challenged and out of our comfort zone that is where the magic happens.
Go make some MAGIC Today!!
