Your Greatest Resource
We sometimes forget how incredibly resourceful we are, until something happens when we absolutely have to tap into that resourcefulness. Then, we rise to the occasion. We are truly warriors, battle scarred with life experience and able to take on all the challenges that come our way!
And, yet, we so often believe that we are not enough. We believe those messages we hear from others, and we tell that to ourselves. I can’t do it. I’m not good enough. But it’s not true at all. We don’t even know our own limits because most of the time we don’t push them. We stop at the border of what we’ve done before and what we haven’t attempted yet. Sometimes, we go a bit further, to those things where we’ve tried before and failed, and we stop. We turn away defeated, thinking we can go no further than what we’ve done already.
I’ve always heard that the most successful people are the ones who fail often. Most people aren’t magically granted success. Sure, the playing field is hardly even, which accounts for some people’s successes. But most individuals who are deemed successful became that way because they kept reaching for what they wanted. They endured rejections but kept going. They tried and failed but didn’t quit. They endured long after many of their contemporaries had given up. Success wasn’t easy. It took grit and perseverance and the solid belief that they could do it, even when they were afraid.
They say that the universe favors the brave. I don’t know if that’s true. I do know that every time I get hit with a huge setback, I find a way to survive. A recent financial setback required that I work harder to find extra work while visiting a plasma donation clinic twice a week. I discovered rebate and coupon apps, and I cut all my bills to the absolute minimum. I made sure my household was living conservatively with minimal waste. It is one of the hardest things I’ve ever done, but I am a single mother of two. I didn’t have the option to just quit, even when I wanted desperately to give up. I kept going. I’m still surviving so far, although I’ve started taking extra vitamins to help my body recover from the frequent donations. I’ve had to manage my time more effectively and work later into the night. But I’ve done it.
And you can, too. Whatever that thing is that you want to try, you can likely do it. But you’ll never know if you don’t make an effort. It’s scary to try for the things we love when we’re as scared of succeeding as we are of failing. There are some things that we want so much that we keep them locked away as a fantasy rather than seeing if they could ever be our reality. I understand that to fail is disappointing, but not to try at all seems so incredibly sad. Because what if, right? What if we succeed? What if we can do it? What if we’re more resilient than we’ve ever known? There’s only one way to find out.
We spend so much of our time looking for someone to save us. We wonder who will help us out of the mess we’re in. It turns out that we are our own greatest resource. If we tap into that inner strength, we will find ourselves exploring the limits of our capabilities. We’ll learn about things we never knew existed and change our lives however we need to in order to make things happen. It’s how people who are afraid of divorce and single parenting make that leap. It’s how people leave reliable jobs to make their dreams come true. It’s how people write books and make art and travel the world. We don’t do it because it’s easy. We do it because it’s necessary. And because it’s necessary, our souls rise to the occasion. We can do it. So can you.
