Never give up on your dreams.
For a few years now, I’ve been throwing out a phrase that you’ve probably heard in combination with Love & Passion.
It’s “never quit.” I still mean it.
Never ever quit. Never quit on yourself. Never quit on your dreams. Never quit on what truly matters to you.
Never quit and never give up pretty much mean the same thing in my mind. They both portray the exact same message and represent the same result – not stopping. They are fantastic characteristics to build into your life when you are trying to better yourself every day, and coming from someone who once – completely and fully quit on himself in college – I can say that they have driven me to greater heights than I ever imagined.
But never quit does not mean you never stop. You never regroup. You never change your path. You never reevaluate your game plan. You never leave. You never exit the stadium.
Any general who went into battle has gotten his a#* handed to him before. But that same general knew the rules of war – and retreating, regrouping, and coming back to the battlefield ready to go back at it again are definitely options in his wheelhouse.
Other options – he might actually leave the battlefield altogether because he’s facing an insurmountable group of forces he didn’t anticipate on being there.
Get slaughtered for ego or move into another position giving yourself a better chance of winning? Winning always comes out on top.
Never quitting is about never surrendering or being forced unwillingly to break from your vision, goals, and aspirations.
It’s about never abandoning yourself and living in despair because the going got tough.
That’s what never quitting is about.
You don’t give up on your vision because something isn’t currently working. But here comes the really important part – you are going to make mistakes on your path, you are going to get into things that may or may not be the best thing for you, and you are going to have to readjust along the way.
No one has ever lived this life infallibly or perfectly. It’s a day by day game of “adapt and adjust” and when you start seeing that something isn’t good for you, then you move on. You move forward. You never stop and pull of the road or start driving backwards because something didn’t work out.
Why?
Because your vision is grander than one person or one thing. The dream is all encompassing and you are searching for more than just a material possession or a person to “make you” but rather a higher state of being that will help you reach the top tiers of self fulfillment. Your true happiness lies in that route.
You cannot build your life on the criticisms or compliments of other people. If you do, you will be built and destroyed on an ever-flowing and morphing foundation. People will hate peaches because they hate peaches.
People will love you for many different reasons that will be unbeknownst to you. Let the outside world look at you and judge you for who you are – but you, you have to continue on with what you believe in and live your life to the fullest – because honestly, this is the only one you have.
That involves loving…caring passionately…never quitting…integrity…all the things I talk about over and over again.
But that also involves making good decisions and leaving when you need to. You make the best decisions you can at the time you are making them and then when things change, you make those same best decisions.
You look at all of the angles and where you want to head in your life, and if they don’t match up – then you move forward without any grudges or hate.
The audience will always talk about the man in the arena and you see it happen over and over again – the man in the arena becomes too concerned with what the audience is whispering about and forgets what he is in the arena for in the first place.
You are there to create your dreams, fight for what you believe in, and birth of life of positivity. If I’m not doing that everyday and I’m thinking all the time about what others are saying about me, well, then I don’t deserve to be in the arena in the first place.
My ship left the harbor a long time ago.
Evan Sanders
The Better Man Project