7 Days 1 Lesson #25
Life's Challenges Are Just Muddy Hills
Failure only arrives when you stop trying.
I'm an absolute sucker for processes that have guaranteed outcomes. For example, if I want to develop a website, I know I can follow a set of processes to make it a reality. Same with putting it online.
What begins to annoy me is when a set of processes has different outcomes based on the person doing it. For example, when a YouTuber follows a new Bolognese recipe, it looks incredible and apparently very delicious.
However, when I follow the same recipe, it looks as if it has just come from a bad night at the Wetherspoons toilets. But recently I've been thinking about this in a broader sense, not just Bolognese.
I've had a few people ask me how I overcame certain challenges in life. One example that comes to the top of my head is "what do you do to keep on top of updates regarding the economy, financial sector and world politics"?
I've tried to answer this in a few ways, pointing people to videos, news sources, and blogs, yet I don't think success is guaranteed by following this process. Someone truly has to be committed.
However, I've recently begun describing the process in a different way. The challenges in life we are trying to tackle can be thought of as a steep hill that has just been rained on.
You begin to climb it, but after a bit, your hand can't make a good grip on the rock above you. You keep trying, but eventually you fall back to the bottom.
At this point, most people would give up and look at an easier hill to climb. One they are more familiar with. But if you truly want to succeed at something, you will get back to work. Eventually, you will reach the top. Some people climb the hill faster than others based on the environment in which they grew up or their history. But what is certain is that continuing to try at it will give you the success you are looking for, or you will die trying.
This lesson makes me think fondly of one of my favourite games. Getting Over It by Bennett Foddy, where you climb a mountain using only a sledgehammer, with no checkpoints. This game is incredibly annoying to most people who play it. In fact, most people give up after the first couple of hours and never touch it again. But if you can continue to climb the mountain with that hammer of yours even after you've fallen hundreds of times, you will eventually succeed and reach the top.
There are two lessons here, really. The first one is simple. If the hill is not worth climbing, don't climb it; find another one and climb it. You can't 100% life, there simply isn't enough time.
The second lesson is that if you really want to achieve something, the most important thing to have and know is determination, which is the tool that has a 100% success rate. If you can stick to something long enough, you will eventually become good enough and therefore eventually climb that hill in front of you.
Quotes Of The Week
- "However difficult life may seem, there is always something you can do and succeed at." – Stephen Hawking
- "You never fail until you stop trying." – Albert Einstein
