If you’re going through Hell, keep going
There’s supposedly no documented citation from Winston Churchill uttering those words, but they’re said to be his and they’re said to have defined Britain’s courage and determination throughout the latest greatest physical war this country has ever known.
These words gave strength of mind to an entire nation; all doubt was cast aside and a collective manifestation of survival grew. Those same words kept me going when I was in a war of my own, when I was in all I knew of hell.
And now, if Churchill will allow me to take this opportunity for some artistic licence, I’d like to rephrase it a little……
Attitude is a little thing that makes a big difference.
Not so long ago, I was called an alien and I was curious as to why, so I asked the perpetrator, also known as Eva, the other half of Mindless Mag – and this was her response:
“You don’t do all the usual rules in life, and you don’t worry about that because our society is ALIEN to you. You don’t worry about things. Also you don’t read the news, that’s alien behaviour”.
A very eloquent and accurate response and I couldn’t help but agree. But over the last couple of days I had a little insight into what it’s like to feel human – a tiny seed of doubt was planted in my mind. And I did worry.
It all happened when I decided to take a step back and review how things were going, you know, with my twenty million Side Hustles that aren’t really just Side Hustles any more.
Mindless Mag and Consciously Curated are both growing at pace. They both require a lot of hard work, a lot of effort and a lot of time. And, as with any start up, what I’m putting in with blood, sweat and is currently churning out a low ROI (return on investment).
One flickering question of doubt led to another, then another and another…
Success is not final, failure is not fatal: it is the courage to continue that counts.
The doubt was minuscule in comparison to that fireball in my stomach that’s fuelling my trail blaze through life, but it was there – and that’s the problem with doubt, it only takes one tiny seed and it’ll grow like Japanese knotweed over the landscape of your thoughts.
Maybe I’m not doing enough? Maybe I’m doing the wrong thing?
Maybe I should settle for something less than what I love and maybe I should give up?
Maybe this is all just a silly little idea and I should just stop dreaming and get a real job, any job.
Or I could up my caffeine dosage and put more hours in? Maybe I need to do as Arnold Schwarzenegger says and sleep faster? I wonder if I can get my hands on one of those blue pills Bradley Cooper gets hooked on in Limitless.
My witchy ego took her stick and stirred this dangerous concoction of polluted thoughts and cynical questions in the burning cauldron of my mind.
The cauldron fired and crackled and popped. It bubbled ferociously, steam was billowing out of my ears until my head felt like it was about to burst.
“Stop”…I said to myself, “JUST STOP”.
A pessimist sees the difficulty in every opportunity; an optimist sees the opportunity in every difficulty
When the mind starts taking you off on a negative path you really do have just two options; continue down the ever-ending rabbit hole of self doubt and fear, or clear out the knotweed with some homemade positive pesticide.
I chose option number two.
I wrote down everything I’m doing; what’s working and what’s not, what I like and what I don’t. I wrote down my vision and how I want to get there. I wrote down the lessons learned and all of the good things; the successes I’ve had so far and how much I love what I’m doing.
I rationalised the doubt; maybe some concerns are reasonable, in fact, maybe all of them are – but I won’t know until I try to prove them wrong.
And after a few minutes of positive scribbles I was starting to feel uplifted; I was rewiring my thoughts and that fire in my stomach was back with a vengeance.
Then I did the only thing that was left to do – I hit up Ted Talks and Youtube for the ultimate brain porn binge.
I watched Steve Job’s 7 Rules of Success and Richard Branson‘s too. I watched Simon Sinek’s Start With Why and Tony Robbins’ How To Become More Disciplined – both for probably the tenth time. And I watched Will Smith’s talk on how God put everything great on the other side of fear.
Then the ultimate motivational talk – Don’t Doubt Yourself by Les Brown, and I remembered his wise words – never let go of your dream.
As exhausting and as scary as it can be, as much dedication and hard graft it requires and as many setbacks or seeds of doubt there will be – it’s worth it.
Because there’s not a single day that goes by when I don’t have a beaming smile on my face and my happiness level goes up a notch. How can you not be happy when you’re chasing your dreams?