I once read about a woman whose name was Florence Chadwick. She was an American swimmer who had a goal of swimming to the shore of mainland California. Florence was an amazing swimmer, known for long-distance open water swimming, and had already been named the first woman to swim the English Channel both ways, setting the time record each time. She was the first woman to swim the Catalina Channel. Determined to reach her goal, Florence stepped into the waters of the Pacific Ocean off Catalina Island, ready to take on her challenge. As she began swimming, she realized that the weather was cold and foggy, and she struggled to see her way through.
Still, Florence swam her way through, for a long 15 hours. At one point she pleaded with her mother to take her out of the water, so that she could get in the boat alongside her; but her mother encouraged her, and told her she was so close, not to give up…that she could make it. Florence became exhausted, physically and emotionally, after continuing for some time. She stopped and was pulled out of the water. When she got onto the boat, she realized that she was only less than a half a mile away. At a news conference the following day, Florence stated “All I could see was the fog, I think if I could’ve seen the shore, I would’ve made it”.
Doesn’t this story sound familiar? Working hard to achieve a goal, and at some point feeling like what’s the point, I’m tired; whether it’s physically, mentally, emotionally, spiritually, or all of the above, we’ve been there. No matter the goal, studying for exams to finish graduate school, trying to start a business, or even trying to evolve and develop ourselves personally, we’ve been there. Ready to give up and throw in the towel, feeling as though we’ll never see the end result, the fruit of our labor. However, just like the story of Florence, it’s usually at the very point that we want to give up that we are about to reach our breakthrough.
“I have seen something else under the sun: The race is not to the swift or the battle to the strong, nor does food come to the wise or wealth to the brilliant or favor to the learned; but time and chance happen to them all.”- Ecclesiastes 9:11 NIV
I want to encourage you to never give up on your dreams, no matter how difficult the challenges may seem to be. If you become exhausted, or feel like you can’t endure, don’t stop altogether…just pause and re-charge. The miracle usually happens right when you have your greatest desire to quit. Have you heard the saying anything worth having is worth fighting for? I find this to be true. Not saying that if it’s easy it’s not worth it, but you usually find you value the things you worked hard for more than those things that came easy. For example, if you paid for the car with your hard earned money, you’d take better care of it, than if it was just handed to you. You have a greater appreciation for it. Don’t give up on your goals. Stay the course. When the goal is reached, you will appreciate all the effort and the lessons during the process to get you to the end result.
If you’re in a place where you’re ready to give up, take some time to re-charge and focus. Write down a list of things you can do to get the passion back to move forward in a positive direction.
