Before the Breakthrough

The ironic thing about success is that as this photo shows, usually people give up just before the very point that were about to achieve a breakthrough.

Lets face it, trying to achieve a goal is hard work. You can strive and strive and strive and seem like you have just got nowhere. Feeling like giving up comes naturally and regularly. Sometimes when we are trying to achieve a goal it is so hard to stay focused and to hold on to the belief that some day we will actually get there.
I felt like giving up so many times.
I can remember working so hard towards numerous goals in my life, failing, getting up , failing, getting up, failing, getting up seemingly trapped in a cycle of non achieving. I felt like giving up more times than I could imagine.
Reading inspirational stories of those who overcame their own struggles to succeed, did not always help, as at times it just reminded me of how far I seemingly had to go before I could ever dream of such success.
What i learnt from failure
But then I learnt an important lesson through all my failures when attempting to launch my own business, make money online and secure full time work as a professional musician. I learnt that 99% of people who fail to achieve a goal, fail because they give up and not because they wouldn’t have made it had they stuck in there for a bit longer. It really is that simple. You see, when most people quit, the vast majority of the time they have absolutely valid reasons for doing so. Maybe they run out of money to continue with a business venture, maybe they physically do not have the time, or maybe they just cannot seem to make work what they are trying to achieve.
Quitting must of course seem like a viable option for us to believe it is the best solution.
However, it is their belief that giving up is the best thing for them to do, which takes them off the path of success they were on and leads them onto a different path of ‘failure.’
Sleeping lions
As a child I remember playing the game sleeping lions. This was a game we would play at a party and would work as follows. A group of children would be the Lions and their job would be to lie very still on the floor without moving. The other children would be the hunters whose job it was to make the Lions move. Now these hunters couldn’t touch the Lions, but could tell them jokes, stories or lies, or get very close to get the Lion to move.
Now, the trick to winning this game was to not move NO MATTER WHAT! Sometimes the hunters would develop elaborate ways to get the Lions to move, including going outside and ringing the doorbell and then telling the sleeping Lions that their parents had arrived to pick them up. Another trick was to ring the phone at the house of the party and tell the sleeping Lion that it was an emergency and they had to take the phone call immediately.
To an impressionable child, these tricks often worked more than once because at the time they seemed so believable.
The only way to truly win at the game Sleeping Lions was to ignore everything around you, no matter how feasible it seemed and keep ‘sleeping.’
As a child it seemed completely logical to stop ‘playing the game’ when somebody told you your parents were there to collect you but this was a lie! Some particularly cunning ‘hunters’ would tell the Lions, that they were no longer playing the game, that there really was an emergency and they should stop ‘sleeping’ immediately, as they were no longer trying to get them to lose, but alerting the Lions to a genuine emergency. This too was a lie!

Life can be a bit like the game Sleep Lions at times.

Just like the hunters in the game Sleeping Lions, there are all sorts of things in life that try and get us to quit. Constant failures, self doubts, negative feedback from others and so on.
At times the reasons that suggest that we should quit also seem so real and genuine but they too are lies that will fade with time. It often seems like giving up is the best and most sensible thing for us to do. This is exactly however when we must not give up.
For as soon as we do quit like the sleeping lion who believes the hunters story, we forfeit all chance of a victory.
In reality, the voice that was telling us to quit, or the circumstance that persuaded us to throw in the towel was counterfeit.
We did not realise, that had we waited for a short time and ridden out the doubt, then the negative voice telling us to quit would have faded into nothing. The finances we so desperately needed would have come to us unexpectedly, and the time we lacked would have been made available. Quitting at the point however meant we could never know this.
So if you are really struggling with achieving something in your life a breakthrough, know that you are at the point where you will begin to see some changes. Don’t give up, keep going, you honestly are closer than you think.
Hold on a little while longer and things will change. This is a promise- keep going.
Until next time
Damian