“ When the going gets tough, the tough get going” goes the common saying but sometimes the going gets too tough even for the toughest: Life, occasionally, throws additional surprises at us from time to time overwhelming even the toughest, forcing even them to think about quitting.
Only the toughest of the toughest will survive whatever life throws at them and to bolster your chances of succeeding you need these three things:
….Discipline……Patience….
DISCIPLINE
You don’t get to win a gold Olympic medal without disciplining yourself to train every day to come rain or sun or whatever else is going on; you don’t get to pass your exams if you don’t discipline yourself to study. You must discipline yourself to carry on even if you don’t feel like doing it.
The most disciplined people in the world are the members of the armed forces: their strict discipline enables them to function, normally, in whatever situation they find themselves and that can be in the middle of a battle, jungle and in all kinds of weather. Hope for the best but mentally discipline yourself to prepare for the worse so if tough times hit you, you can still go, go, go. The right kind of discipline puts you in the right state of mind to deal with whatever is happening to you or around you.
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PATIENCE
Patience is a virtue and a valuable tool to have: nothing ever goes according to plan – and never will. The unexpected can throw in problems, obstacles or delays throwing your carefully made-up plans out of the window. Patience doesn’t mean you wait for a month, a year or even 10 years before you decide to give up. Patience means you keep on waiting, waiting, waiting…….and keep on waiting until it happens, even if it means waiting for a hundred years! A lot of people quit because they lack the patience to carry on. If you’re impatient you will crash and burn! The secret of patience is you never quit waiting for things to happen.
RESILIENCE
Dr Paul Eneche, the founder of Dunamis Church, once told the amusing story of a small dog that kept on getting beaten up by another dog 3 times its size.
Every day the small dog would crawl under the gate of his compound and go next door where the bigger dog lived. Everyday the bigger dog would beat up the smaller dog and everyday the smaller dog would keep on coming back for more and more punishment until one day when the bigger dog saw him coming he ran away: he ran away because he was fed up and tired of beating up the smaller dog who didn’t seem to bother and kept on coming back for more.
The morale of this story is simple: if Life keeps on beating you up and knocking you to the floor, like a fallen boxer, you get up and keep on fighting until one day Life, itself, gets fed up of making your life a misery and leaves you alone. This is resilience and in the words of Winston Churchill,” If you’re going through Hell, keep going! Never, never, never give up!”. If you are going through Hell, you keep on going! You keep on going or the fires of Hell will burn you! You do not stop! You do not slow down! You keep on going! And you keep ongoing…..In the process you become stronger and stronger till you get to a point whereby you become ‘unbreakable’ – you become immune to whatever Life throws at you – like you’re wearing a bulletproof jacket or a suit of armour.
So when the going gets too tough to maintain discipline and stay focused; be patient and remember Rome wasn’t built in a day. And most important of all be resilient, take all the punches life throws at you and come back for more and ride out the storm.