Why You Must Not Give Up Easily

 There is a time to give up and there is time to be very resilient and refuse to give up. For the latter, the pursuit must be really worthwhile in the long term and one must be very passionate about that endeavor.

You give up when something is obviously futile and the results are clearly unfavorable to you even when you keep trying. 

It can be challenging to know when to give up on anything or when to keep trying but the quick test I use to find out is this: Does this really matter or mean something to me? Would achieving this clearly help my purpose and mission in life? Can I still live a fulfilled and meaningful life without getting this?

If the answer to any of these questions is Yes, then it could be worthwhile for you to not give up on it and change your methods. 

If we decide to not give up on anything, we must be willing to keep trying towards it. It's like a commitment you have made and you won't stop until you achieve that which you have decided upon. 

You are not stopping because you determined earlier on that achieving this is critical to your life's purpose and mission. The things that are not worth giving up on are usually long term. For example if you give up on a job , it's not so long term as when you give up on your commitment to live a life of impact.

You can get other jobs or start other endeavors that could lead you to still make an impact in the world around you. So the job is not a do or die affair, you can still live without it. 

But if you give up on commitment to live a life of impact and touch the lives of people around you, what is there to live for then? This commitment is long term and no matter how many times we appear to fail in this, we must never give up on such goals that have long term benefits to our existence.

I was inspired to write this blog post because a friend said something this morning that hit me different. He said: "You just need 1 success to forget many failures. If you give up, how will you explain that you tried?"

And this was really insightful. Because the world really doesn't care about the stories of how you tried and failed. Nobody wants to be bored to death listening to that. 

The world rather wants to listen to how you tried, failed and despite all odds became successful. In other words, people will want to listen to your story and can tolerate listening to the periods when you failed because you now have at least one success coming out of it!

And this understanding alone is why we must never give up on things that means something to us no matter how many times we fail. That one success that comes will encourage millions of others who will want to listen to you because you have succeeded in something. 

If everything you have to show is failures, no matter how many times you try, nobody will want to listen. The only guarantee that anyone will care to hear what you've got to say is when you have at least one success in your endeavor under your belt.

If you haven't gotten it yet, you can't give up just yet!

I had a side chat with a friend of mine as well whether this culture of only listening to some people is beneficial to society. And the consensus was a big "Yes". 

It encourages people currently working towards anything that it's possible. We discussed briefly on a concern that those who believe in cheating their way through or criminals would glorified by such societal values. 

Our conclusion was that yes, even though criminals may be inadvertently glorified by that culture of listening to the successful, we cannot throw away the baby with the bathwater. That doesn't make the culture bad in itself, but the truth always comes out and criminals often meet their waterloo exposing them. 

Therefore, those seeking to build wealth legitimately and have not given up on that should not use the wrong glorification of criminals as a justification to give up or not keep pursuing the 1 success that will put them in a position where they can be listened to.. criminals will get caught up with their crime. 

But those still striving legally cannot give up because of that or give up because they have tried many times. The joy of telling your story through that one success and the joy of encouraging possibly millions of other who believe they do not need turn to criminals to build wealth should be sufficient to keep you trying to get at your success.

I hope this is encouraging.

Keep trying and keep winning!

-Ike