CHAPTER 66
STAY AT IT
Staying put at a project could be very difficult especially when you are handicapped of the necessary training that could enable you get through the project. Even when all the training and facilities are at your disposal, there is still the tendency towards worry and anxiety that pushes you to taking irrational paths away from or at tangent to the intended path.
Worry and anxiety are couples. They produce “time waste” as offspring. You lose your sense of direction been inflicted with inconsequential thoughts that demean your previous achievements. You become blind to future opportunities.
Now, you have started a project; it could be academic, work, church, building etc. As you build block for block and step for step, this often happens. Challenges arise. Some are planned but most unplanned. If planned challenges arise, you might have developed antidotes to check them. But what happens when unplanned challenges arise? Do you worry about them? No.
Here are some nature lessons. Go look at the ants.
Isolate an ant, place it around a dead cockroach, and watch what happens. The cockroach is bigger sized and would pose a challenge for the ant to move it and then get it into its hole. The ant would first survey the cockroach, measure its size and then tries to drag the cockroach as much as it can. Often the ant acknowledges its limitations but never worries about it. It goes get some extra help from other ants who come running.
If you stay longer and follow through the movement of the ants, you will observe how they strive to pull the cockroach. When they finally get the cockroach to the hole, they observe that their hole only suites their size but not that of the cockroach yet they never worry or develop cold feet. Rather their thinking faculty comes to play. Somehow, the cockroach will have to get in. It’s often a big project for the ants but they stay at increasing the size of the hole. Slowly, slowly, the cockroach gets into the hole and finally disappears as the ants return their hole to its initial size.
The lesson derived from the ant situation is that you do not have to worry about the challenges you may face or are facing at that project. Stay at it. It’s only when you stay put and tackle the challenges that you get a breakthrough.
Many persons cannot focus. As their projects begin, they expect it to go smooth sailing. They expect and believe they have acquired all the training that they require. They may even be the best acclaimed around. Nevertheless, that does not stop challenges. Challenges have no respect for qualifications or training. What happens is; the bigger the qualifications and the training a person has gotten, the bigger the challenges that strive to rubbish how much they know.
If you must overcome your challenges, then patience is a much-needed virtue. You have to create patiently solutions devoid of worry or anxiety. Worry and anxiety create double troubles. They delay you over a task that would have taken a few hours of patience to achieve. You may leave the task altogether because you have doubts about your capacity to get it done and only after many years of getting it wrong and rediscovering yourself will you come to discover that you had made a wrong choice of allowing worry and anxiety take supreme place. By this time, you would have lost precious assets.
Worry blindfolds us to opportunities. We bring yesterday’s failures, today’s troubles and tomorrow’s challenges into our minds allowing them press us until we can’t see the light that’s shining all around us. We run when no one’s pursuing because we anticipate that someone will always be pursuing when in reality no one’s behind our backs. We create trouble and more trouble when we develop worry and anxiety.
How do you get your mind off worry and anxiety? You have to find a friend and talk your problems out. Its sometimes difficult if you are of a particular genre of human species with temperaments that ties you towards self. However, you can’t afford to stand alone and suffer from your choking inadequacies. A good friend will offer tangible help and strength when you are failing. If you are married, your wife and children could be sources of strong encouragement.
You will also need spiritual solace. God is the absolute solace for your life. By drawing near to him, you find relief in drawing close to him as often as you can. Developing a good relationship with God is the inspiration you need to propel you into carrying out any project however difficult it may seem. When you trust God, he sees you through the odds.
Develop a cheerful and grateful disposition. Keep a fat smiling cheek. It helps to ease your heart’s ache. Always try as much as possible to show gratitude however little a deed. You will always see life as unending miracles and you a part of it with your own testimonies. This will help you see your challenges as another miracle about to give you a testimony to enable you show gratitude.
Its time you gave worry and anxiety an uppercut. Stay at that project and see it succeed.