Making The Effort To Succeed

I have seen a lot of people starting in business very enthusiastic then to find out later on that they gave up doing it. Yes its not easy to be in business however it makes me wonder how come people who have qualities and advantages to succeed yet end up quitting.

 

So here is what I have observed. People who quit in general most often boils down to one thing: They cannot handle obstacles.

 

Yet, in every thing we choose to go into, whether business, sports etc., there will always be obstacles along the way to succeed.

 

I believe that the lessons in business is not far from how we should also view life. Indeed, there will be obstacles along the way. What most people have in mind when they go into something is that everything will go as planned. What they don’t know is that obstacles will come and that most of the time, these obstacles will definitely disturb, disorient and eventually disappoint us. 

 

I am no longer surprised when people, who went into business then quit, tell me the reasons why they are quitting. Most often its all about being disappointed about something and most of the time their disappointments comes from failed expectations. We expect to succeed in everything we do yet we did not get what we expected. For example, we expect people will give us the support we need yet they did not, then we get disappointed; we expect people to treat us the way we wanted to be treated, yet they did not, so again we get disappointed; we expect to earn immediately yet we did not and so again we get disappointed and etc. Since we don’t have the mental toughness most entrepreneurs have when it comes to handling disappointments, we finally tell ourselves, “maybe this is not for me”, “maybe there is something better out there for me”, “I no longer find meaning in what I do”, etc., so finally we decided there’s no other way but to give up.

 

As I was reading one of my favorite books, The Inner Game of Tennis, written by W. Timothy Gallwey. I get reminded again what obstacles are in relation to the goals we have set for ourselves. I play tennis and this book helped me a lot to improve my success in the court. Although Gallwey’s book is about tennis, its principles is applicable for those who wants to be the best in what they do.  One thing I learned from him is to consider this: the more challenging the obstacle we face, the greater the opportunity for us to discover and extend our true potential. The potential is always in us but until it got manifested in action, it will remain hidden in us.

 

We probably have set a a goal we wanted to achieve and we try our best to achieve it. The thing is, as Gallwey said, there’s actually no point of giving up when we understand that in true competition, no one is defeated. So, our goals simply presents obstacles to us. There is a huge difference between being concerned to succeed and concerned about making the effort to succeed. The former, believe it or not, you cannot control the outcome and this leads to anxiety and you trying very hard. Yet the latter, we can control the effort we put to succeed in accomplishing our goal. 

 

Japanese people has a way of reminding themselves of giving their best effort. You would often hear the word  頑張って (がんばって) Gambatte! meaning do your best or persevere to reach your goal.

 

Perhaps, there’s just very few people who likes challenges. I for one, I like challenges. It allows me to explore my capabilities in overcoming the obstacle my goal presents. One thing I know for sure is that the obstacles we face is simply an obstacle coming from our goal. The moment we give up, we eventually give up to the goal we set for ourselves. We will not be given an obstacle that is not aligned to that particular goal we wanted. In fact, we should stop and ask ourselves, is this obstacle, once i overcome it, will lead me to my goal? Will it be worth my effort to overcome this one? So it may seem crazy for some, yet, I learned in my years, more than a decade actually, of being an entrepreneur is learning to give our maximum effort in overcoming obstacles and finding out if overcoming is going to be worth our effort.