Persistence
“Nothing in this world can take the place of persistence. Talent will not; nothing is more common than unsuccessful men with talent. Genius will not; unrewarded genius is almost a proverb. Education will not; the world is full of educated derelicts. Persistence and determination alone are omnipotent. The slogan 'Press On!' has solved and always will solve the problems of the human race.”
― Calvin Coolidge
This saying by Calvin Coolidge hit me in the spot. I am guilty of it. I mentioned in my previous blog, My Story Part 3, that I wanted to quit culinary industry several times because of financial delusions. I was questioning why some people work less and make more while I slave away putting in more hours to work than an average joe for a mere salary. It got me thinking.
A Backstory About Stocks, Crypto and Options
When I was 19, my brother introduced me to the stock market trading. He even came up with a PowerPoint presentation and explained how it works. I paid attention but did not think about pursuing it. At that time, I had different interests. Years passed by and I started to “invest”—did a lot of foolish mistakes that made me lose thousands. I could have been a Bitcoin millionaire if I just stuck to my plan. I always said to myself that it is a learning process that can take years to master. Yes, it is, but if you are constantly losing, then there’s a point where you just have to stop, money is finite.
My effort to make it big in the stock market diverted my attention from cooking. This is where I started to hate my profession. I made my first gain of $2,400 in fifteen minutes and said to myself that there are people in this world that make a dollar, two dollars or three dollars for a whole day’s labor and here I am sitting at home and just made this much. This is a year’s salary for somebody, it’s a monthly salary for most line cooks here in America. It opened my mind to a different world. But then, the journey started to spiral down like a roller coaster. All the high moments started to mix in with the lows. I would find myself holding on to a losing trade for too long and get paralyzed. My wife caught me one time getting pale in a matter of minutes. All the blood from my toes and fingers were retreating somewhere in my body. My cheeks and lips were lifeless. I couldn’t press the sell button, still in shock, while the P&L reads -$12,000. How can you recover from such a thing? You can’t blame anyone but yourself. In trading, when you lose, it’s even harder to make it back. You will be lucky sometimes but as a beginner, you are just giving away your money to the market.
I have burned a lot of money hoping to become big and wealthy.
I dreamt of sports cars, the stay-at-home lifestyle and nice watches.
I gave away a lot of promises to the people I love and told them that I will shower them with unreasonable gifts.
In the end, none of these materialized.
I forgot that nothing great comes easy, that good things take time. I found myself helpless as I depleted my bank account.
Mentally & emotionally devastated, I felt that there was no hope. I hated myself so bad that I started to have suicidal thoughts. But, rather than give up in life, I sought solutions. I accepted my mistakes painfully, like a man trying to shove a huge rock in his mouth. When you’re forcing something down your throat, it’s not just the mouth that is aching, but other parts of your body too. In this case, it was my ego. To tell yourself that you were proven wrong is the hardest thing to swallow when you feel like you’ve got the world in your hands. When you’re too high above, the drop is more devastating.
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PERSISTENCE
Persistence, a word that resounds hope with the ambition of reaching a goal. It encompasses an individual’s journey of life to get to his destination. Though we always hope that results from our efforts are expedited, the reality is that nobody or nothing can really tell you when you will reach your goal. People say that life is a marathon, not a sprint—so enjoy the process and persist.
It is true that talent and skill are not enough to be successful in life—far from it. Talent and skill can help you expedite the journey and are just ways for you to be recognized for potential or be distinguished. But, in some cases, they become deterrents for people to reach their full potential. Why, you may ask? It’s for the simple reason that when we get recognized to have the talent, we become complacent of what we do. In some instances, we tell ourselves that we are too good for a certain job, thus, making us feel superior and entitled to not do whatever it takes to reach our goal. Or perhaps, we have the skills but not have the impetus to push through or to trust ourselves that we can make it. Some just don’t have a reason to persevere. We doubt and we give up. One of life’s biggest disappointments is giving up on something knowing that you didn’t give your all. Trust me, there is plenty of stories in the world about this, it pains to say that even myself and people who are close to me, have suffered this kind of mishap.
For those who do not know, Colonel Sanders had been rejected 1099 times selling his idea before somebody recognized his secret chicken recipe. KFC is what it is now because of a man’s persistence and believed that his idea will make the world a better place. How’s that for a story?
It seems so easy to tell people to persist in what their endeavors are. It’s so convenient to share the words “just weather it all” until you become a lawyer or a doctor or whatever you are pursuing. We don’t know what goes in their heads. That’s why it’s so difficult to judge somebody, and we shouldn’t. In reality, we don’t know how they are feeling, how good their coping mechanism is and if we even have any idea of what they’re even going through at all.
The causes of not persisting
Reflect right now and think about the times when you gave up on something easily. Did you regret it? Could you have done something different to alter the result to your liking? I sure have a lot of experiences where I gave up on something too soon. It all boiled down to fear, doubt and lack of motivation.
Fear
In this article, we are talking about fear as the idea of failing, losing something, and of risking for the unknown. There are a lot of causes of feeling such a thing. We fear because we do not want to take risks, or we are scared to lose something if things do not go our way. In some cases, we fear because we do not want change in our lives, leaving our comfort zone or changing our routine leads to unease and worry. In fact, some people would rather settle for a safer option than feel any discomfort or strife.
Raise your hand if you are guilty of this scenario:
A daunting task has been presented to you to act on it. It could be a deadline for a project, or somebody got terminated or resigned and now you have to fill that role. You are afraid because you are not ready or do not have the skillset to fulfill the task on hand. You then start to play scenarios in your head of the worst possible outcomes that could happen. You haven’t started anything yet but the fear has already started to consume you and you cannot stop overthinking. So, the big day comes and all the expected scenarios that you created in your head did not even happen at all—everything went smooth.
How much of your time did you spend in fear and worrying? It probably consumed you the night before. I am guilty of this and I am so bad at it. It still happens occasionally but not as often as it used to be. This happens to all of us especially when we are at a stage in our lives where we haven’t garnered or mustered the full confidence in what we do. This is normal, because WE ARE AFRAID TO FAIL. To most of us, failing is not an option. It is an embarrassment to our very character. But through the years, I learned to accept my mistakes and take failure as a learning experience, as a tool to build character. Being able to let go of prejudice and what others say about your failure makes you free of worrying, it benefits you to learn, move on and persist.
Doubt
Doubting is a formidable foe. It is a precursor to experiencing fear and anything that comes after. You doubt something initially before you formulate ideas that create fear in your mind. And from there, your head will be everywhere. The worst that can happen, and it happens often, is doubting yourself. When I was younger and was about to leave home, I never doubted my decision to embark on a journey to the unknown. I was bold and determined to pursue something that I know would be beneficial to me. Life unfolded, I took all the beating and triumphed. When you have that much focus and confidence in yourself that you start to believe that you can move mountains, then you will really move mountains. It’s as simple as that. But often times, we fail to tell ourselves that there’s nothing impossible to a man who is persistent. We doubt our skill set or our determination and it impales us, paralyzing our brains to take flight instead of fighting the negative thoughts.
Lack of Motivation
Not having motivation or a reason behind a goal is like having a car without fuel. You have a goal in sight but cannot operate because there is no medium for you to reach it. Doesn’t that sound foolish? One needs inspiration because humans are motivated by emotions. Inspiration gives us positive emotions which become the driving force to pursue a goal. Listen to this, If the world never published any article or news regarding rags to riches stories, do you think people will strive less? In my opinion yes, people will stop pursuing what they are pursuing because there is no inspiration. They will formulate the idea that there’s no way for them to climb from the ground. “Well, I haven’t heard of a person who started from the bottom and made it to the top, which means, that it’s either I should be born into money or I should be doing something illegal.” But the fact that we are bombarded daily with news of inspiring stories of how someone who used to be this or that is now an owner of X company or the founder of a multi-billion-dollar conglomerate— speaks to us that if they can do it, you can do it.
Without inspiration, there is no reason to strive or persevere towards reaching a goal. We may as well just be like animals in the wild hunting for food and worry about just surviving or getting by.
The good thing about finding inspiration is that it can be as simple as putting your family first and take care of them, or to more complex goals like solving poverty and global warming. Some people are inspired to do their best to give their kids, spouse or family the best lives that they can ever have—that is a strong motivation. Some, want to solve a problem that happens all around the world—stronger. But whatever it is, an individual must first seek a VERY formidable inspiration to help them pursue what they want—that inspiration will fuel your persistence to push.
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What I learned from failing at persisting
Create a memory bank of failed experiences, use this to your advantage
Whenever I give up on something, I always catch myself feeling miserable about how I approach a situation. I always tell myself that “I could’ve done it in a different way, how come it’s only now that I’m able to think about and realize this?” One thing is for sure, that we can never change what has happened already. We learn from our mistakes and store this failed experience into our memory bank. If we are wise enough, then this failed encounter will enable us to maneuver ourselves perfectly the moment that a situation like this arises the second or third time around.
You must not repeat the same mistakes over and over again, this is foolishness.
Stop dwelling in the past
Based on experience, this is one of the worst things to do. I get it, it’s so easy to look back and blame ourselves for handling a situation negatively. Doing this often will create a negative habit and causes mental deterioration. You will notice that people who constantly dwell in the past are negative and highly irritable. They’re always in a bad mood and think that nothing good can come out of any situation.
Rather than being in the habit of dwelling in the past, what one must do is to acknowledge the failure, store it in the memory bank and move on with a fresh perspective. Yes, as humans, we become emotional, that’s normal. Although, what I want to tell you is that you can’t use failure as an excuse to trample yourself with the burden of something for a month, a year or a decade. We only have about seventy to eighty years to live. How long will you mourn for something?
Be optimistic about the future, especially when time is on your side
Persistent individuals see the light at the end of the tunnel unexpectedly. Blessings come when we least expect it, so don’t seek for it or put a date to when you’re anticipating, it doesn’t work like that. My advice is to be optimistic about the future, keep pushing through and eventually, things will be alright. If I can tell something to my younger self of twenty one, I will tell him that time is on your side, just embrace everything and persist. Take the most beaten path, bow your head and learn from mistakes, do not burn bridges and live life.
Do not stop learning, have an open mind, but keep your guard up
We think that learning stops once we get out of school. Although, in reality, we learn more from the real world than in a school setting. Mistakes are part of learning, do not discredit the best teacher of all. Part of persisting is to learn new things so we can adjust to a new normal. We follow the trend and what currently works in our generation. Although, not everything that’s new must be put into practice. If something is not morally right for you, then you need not to practice it. Acknowledge that something is new but it will be up to you whether it is beneficial for you or not.
In closing
I left the house at the age of twenty one, quite late for western standards but quite early for asian culture. I never looked back and always relied only on myself for being resourceful and self- sufficient. With that said, whenever something wrong happens to me, who do I blame? My parents? No, I blame myself for everything. I didn’t realize that I was causing this negative habit in my head and began to always expect the worst in every outcome to convince myself that ‘just in case this happens, then I am prepared.’ Pretty smart right? No.
This mindset made me a pessimist. I didn’t realize it until I got married. My wife would mention that I was always negative and that I can’t see any sunlight coming through from the sky— that there’s a dark cloud that followed me wherever I went.
My remedy arrived out of the unexpected and it didn’t cost much.
The Sun.
Sunlight, to be exact.
Going to the beach and living in a sunny city enabled me to approach life in a different way. It’s like I was given an option to keep on dwelling in the past and hold my past grudges or embrace the future and just put yourself out there. I’m living my life right now like this because I chose the latter. I’ve persisted and climbed up the ladder pretty fast. Although, I want to remind everyone that nothing happens overnight. To where I am right now, mentally, took me about 3-5 years of constantly fixing bad habits and switching mindsets.
I want to let you know that I started writing this article back in August of 2023. Today is September 22, 2024 and I’m just about to finish this piece. During the whole year in between, I started to go to the gym to exercise regularly, I’m about to hit my first full year in November, which is an achievement to me. Exercising plays a really important role to my mental health. It keeps me level-headed, grounded and energetic. I feel better right now at the age of 33 as compared to when I was 28 or 29. I have more energy right now and kinder to people. I feel positive about my future and have a lot of ideas and projects to accomplish to help me become productive and helpful to my community.
If you ask me right now, how I was able to go through all the challenges that I faced before, then I would answer you this:
It’s a combination of believing in my abilities to become triumphant and persisting. The boy who left at the age of 21 has already won over life the moment he left those doors.