Posts Tagged ‘Tenacity’

There was a particular day in my life where I found myself battling to identify the next steps I should take in regards to some projects that I was working on when I was reminded of the storyboards that are designed for feature movies. These are hand drawn pictures of each of the frames of a film that are created before it is ever filmed. These storyboards are used to guide the director as to how best set up the greatest shots that will finally appear in the film. It is the visual plan for the movie.

Then I spent a weekend reading the final volume written by Sir Winston Churchill about the  final years of the 2nd world war. The overriding impression I received as I read it was that the allies knew exactly when they were going to win the war. And although it didn’t always go according to plan the fact was that they had a plan – and would make adjustments to the plan as they went. Churchill, along with the American and Russian leaders that worked closely with him, knew when Hitler’s and the Japanese nation’s demise was going to happen. And they then continued to work towards the fulfillment of that plan. They never considered the possibility of defeat. It was a detailed and well executed plan that we can now read in the history books.

And then I was reminded of the last two years that I spent at school as a teenager. I studied science which consisted of three areas – physics, chemistry and biology. For the bulk of those two years – before my finals – I failed every single test in Physics and Chemistry. But through sheer persistence and hard work I passed with flying colors when it was really needed. The irony of it all was that I was accepted in to university to study Science. I may have lost many a battle along the way, but I won the war.

And life is very much like that. I know for a fact that throughout my lifetime there are innumerable battles that I have lost – but my concentration is not on the battles. I want to make sure that I position myself so that at the end of my life I will be able to clearly declare – and it will be proved by the legacy that I leave behind – that I have in fact won the war.

It is for that reason that I never compare myself to others who seem to be able to win battle after battle after battle. And that is where I am reminded of the following story of men who may have won the battle – but ultimately lost the war.

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Life is the greatest road trip ever, but at times it can be rather confusing. We start out with dreams, with inspirations and with goals. And then life’s responsibilities overtake, and can at times dim the dream, or even cloud the mission.

But my experience has been this – that as long as you continue to travel on the road towards your dream, and seek to do that which is excellent – everything that you’re assigned to do – then there will be an unveiling of your dream little by little.

But it is in the traveling that there is the unraveling.

If you simply stay put, and never apply action to your dream. If you never tempt risk. If you never position yourself for possible failure, then you are in fact robbing yourself of the rich rewards that come with the unraveling.

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Alex Haley, the best selling author of  the epic book ROOTS once said, ‘Anytime you see a turtle up on top of a fence post, you know he had some help.’

I must admit that I personally have an affinity with the humble turtle, or rather the tortoise.

For at times I believe that what takes others five minutes to do, can at times take me anything up to five years to complete. One example being that after dating my wife for over five years, it took my mother saying, ‘Are you ever going to marry that girl’ to spark the thought and finally the corresponding action that led to marriage.

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‘The tenacity to hang on, while everybody else is letting go, will demonstrate the winner that is found within you.’

I remember seeing a calendar that depicted a cat hanging from a branch of a tree by one claw. The title to the drawing was, ‘Hang in there’. Now I am not proposing that you have to reach such desperate measures But in order to secure your success, you will need to walk the extra mile, stay the extra hour, do the extra research, step out from the crowd and swim against the current at times. The reason? Winners are a different breed. When everyone else has hung himself or herself, the winner hangs on to win, time and time again.