Don't Let Your Problems Win

You know how they say when it rains, it pours? That rings true for more than just the weather.

It's been 11 days since my introduction post. In the past week, my uncle died unexpectedly and my childhood dog was diagnosed with an untreatable brain tumor.

It's been one hell of a year. If I learned anything, it's to never waver—don't let terrible events stop you or moving forward becomes harder. This year, I started living by the saying Bend, don't break. Now, whenever trials appear, I repeat that phrase to myself.

Bend, don't break.

Magically, I end up ok. Whatever the issue was that was causing me to tell myself that, I overcame it. I either found a solution, took it on the chin and learned better for next time, or just had to deal with the consequences. But what does it actually mean? Well, it should be obvious, but for those who don't think so, it means to never let something tear you down to the point of no return, or never let something in your life make it incredibly hard to bounce back from. Look adversity or challenges in the eye and tackle them. Don't be intimidated by problems; think of it as YOU intimidating your problems. You won't quit until there is a solution or until you can learn better for next time.

Another thing I learned, and actually relatively recently, is that you shouldn't get into the habit of quitting. I have a new boss at work, and while explaining his story to me, he used that sentence, and I ran with it. I used to be a quitter, lazy, pathetic, and an embarrassment to my family. I wasn't a bad kid; I was just doing nothing productive, but I had potential nobody knew about. Most people underestimate what they can accomplish when they apply themselves to something. Once I stopped quitting things because they were difficult or it didn't feel like I was making progress, my life drastically improved. Confidence up. Skills up. Value up. These built on top of each other —it made it easy to deal with problems. I don't run from them now; I always face them, even if I fail.

Regardless of what people say, failure is the key to success without a doubt. If you don't fail, you don't learn, and you can never grow. Failure is vital to succeeding in life. I make mistakes at work, but if I didn't make these mistakes, I wouldn't learn from them, so I don't make them again. Why don't you just ask questions so you don't fail in the first place? I haven't found the correct answer to this question yet, but I think for me personally it's along the lines of doing it yourself so you build confidence naturally. If you do it alone, you can feel confident about doing it correctly the next time alone and making those decisions. Maybe that's just blabber. The real answer is I don't really know.

The moral of the story is that if you get kicked down, life will keep kicking you, but you'd better have the strength to not let that keep you down. Keep working, keep pushing. Reminder that every time you get back up, you get mentally tougher. Every single time you run into a problem in your life, be it relationships, work, or family life, tackle it. That's another rep to get better. The more you do it, the better you respond to future adversity.

Similar to the squat rack, every time you bring that bar back up, you just get stronger. And tree trunks.

Our greatest weakness lies in giving up. The most certain way to succeed is always to try just one more time. -Thomas A. Edison