Why We Give Up (and How Not To)

During my last installment talking about Price Pritchett’s book, You2, I laid out several strategies for making your quantum leap. These were: ignore unconventional approaches, seek the elegant solution and be ruthless about trying something different.

How did you do? Did you open up your mind, experiment in your actions and let yourself leap?

Or, did you try a few things and then fall back upon the status quo? Did you give up?

If you fell short of your leap, listen up. These next couple of minutes could change your life.

Why We Give Up
When we start to venture into the unknown, subconsciously we want to pull in close to us everything that is familiar. By this I mean habits of thought, ways of working, those conventional approaches you were supposed to ignore.

Before you know it, little has changed. Perhaps you made some modest gains but not the big win you sought.

Sure, you may have rationalized, convinced yourself that quitting was the better choice, but in the end, you gave up. Why?

In part, you quit because you were in pain. Mentally, emotionally, you were tired, perhaps frustrated, certainly experiencing the stress of the momentum as you tried to better your life.

But it wasn’t only the pain that made you quit. It was more that you didn’t know when that pain was going to stop. And that scared you.

What you experienced was very much like when a child falls and skins his or her knee. The first or second time, the child has little or no experience with that kind of pain and screams bloody murder.

Why is he screaming so much? He’s screaming because he doesn’t know when the pain is going to stop. For all he knows, it will go on forever. He doesn’t know that he’s going to be all right.

The same is true for us when we cast into the unknown and try to build something really big. We’re breaking boundaries, tearing down walls, going beyond anything that we’ve ever done before.

Emotional and mental pain are created and, like the child, we’re afraid because we don’t know when or if that pain is going to stop. We start to consider that success is not worth it; we doubt ourselves and our dream. We quit.

The people who experience the big wins are the ones who are able to push through that threshold and experience their life and business on the other side.

When you’ve done that once, you realize that the outcome is worth any discomfort you experienced along the way. You become, as my mentor said, “comfortable being uncomfortable.”

You remember why you’re doing this in the first place. You remember that there’s a seed of genius within that aches to be expressed. And so you strike out again into the unknown. You pursue your dream and your birthright.

Wouldn’t you like this to be you?

Hit the Reset Button and Try Again
If so, I want you to try again. Reread my last entry on my blog, and then over the next few weeks, follow its advice: Ignore conventional approaches, seek the elegant solution and be ruthless about trying something different.

If you get tired or frustrated or your confidence flags, picture that child with the skinned knee. That child is you.

Today you have a skinned knee but, eventually, your knee will stop hurting, and it will heal. And then, the next time, you’ll coordinate your movements better; you’ll run and jump with more grace and you’ll figure out more elegant ways to land.

If you can hang in there long enough, learn as much as you can from these lessons and any other work you do with me, you will experience your quantum leap. You will begin to have the life you’ve always wanted.

Coaching, quantum leap, success, try