Never Give Up
Posted 6th May 2014 at 11:52 PM by markdawes
"Fall Seven Times - Stand Up Eight" - Japanese Proverb.
A few years ago, when my son was much younger, he was determined to ride his bike without stabilizers. He was determined to ride on two wheels and he was not going to give up until he did it.
As I covertly watched and listened to him I could hear him talking to himself saying things like; "I can do it, I can do it. I can ride on two wheels, I can ride on two wheels. I can ride this bike, I can ride this bike." As is the case with anyone who is determined he eventually managed to ride his bike without the aid of the stabilizers.
However, before he finally achieved it he wobbled and fell over many times. But he kept on going. He didn't lose sight of what he wanted to achieve, and because that picture was so clear in his mind, resolved by a clear and definite purpose and backed up by sheer determination, all of the wobbles and falls finally gave way to the achievement of his highly focused goal.
For me the experience was a host of mixed emotions. I was very proud of the way he was willing himself to do something on his own, but I was also worried that he would fall off and hurt himself. However, this was something that he had to do on his own. He had to do this for himself.
The other day I was watching the great Professor Robert Winston talking about fertility treatment. Dr Winston is a leading pioneer in family medicine who has helped thousands of families have children.
However, what was interesting about what Professor Winston said was that he had failed in seventy-five percent of cases. However, each failure had led him to find new and innovative ways of helping others.
Imagine knowing that any success you have is built on a failure rate of 75%. But he is not alone. Many great athletes also fail over 75% of the time to achieve their goals. Again, their greatness is built on an 80% failure rate.
However, it is the way they deal with failure, the meaning they attribute to failure, and the positive experiences they draw from it, that makes great athletes and great surgeons greater then their contemporaries.
"The More I Try, The Luckier I Get" - Jack Nicklaus
A major general difference between most adults and children is that adults give up too easily. If they try something once and it doesn’t work, that possibly is all the proof they need not to try something different, or do things in a different way.
However, if were to take more chances, if they were willing to try different options or approaches, they would possibly open up new ways of thinking. Sometimes what we are hoping to achieve is just below the surface of our conscious awareness, striving to break through, yet we give up and so the seed isn’t watered and fed and eventually resigns itself to a life below the surface.
Monitor Your Feedback!
Do you know the percentage of the time an aircraft is off course when flying to its pre-determined destination? Well it might surprise you to know that it is off-course approximately 95% of the time! As soon as the aircraft takes off it is affected by wind-speed and various other conditions that take it off-course.
However, because the aircrew continually monitor the aircraft’s progress and flight-path through use of the aircraft’s navigational instruments, the aircraft is continually brought back on track so that it can arrive at the right destination at the right time.
So good are we as a human race of being able to use feedback to monitor and correct, that we can even send a spacecraft millions of miles away into a far flung part of the universe in order for it to arrive at it’s planetary destination to within a few seconds of its expected time of arrival, even if no such craft had even been sent to that planet before!
Yet when it comes down to what we want to achieve we find ourselves incapable of modelling thousands of others who have already achieved that goal, and in doing so left us with a clear map with explicit directions and instructions of how they did it.
In great contrast to this, many find reasons why they couldn’t duplicate what has already been achieved.
Maybe fear of success scares them? Maybe it is a belief that they were not meant to be successful, that success is the privilege of other ‘luckier’ people.
“I hated every minute of training, but I said, don't quit. Suffer now and live the rest of your life as a champion.'' - Muhammad Ali
Our history is abundant with people who kept going when all around them stopped. It took Thomas Edison over ten-thousand attempts before he finally invented the electric light bulb.
After seven thousand attempts he was asked why he kept going when he had failed so many times. Edison's response was; "I haven't failed. I have just found over seven thousand ways not to make a light-bulb."
Then there is the remarkable story of Ernest Shakleton. Shakleton was an explorer whose expedition to the South Pole in 1915 ended in disaster when his ship became trapped and sank in the ice. As a result his goal of reaching the South Pole ended and instead he set himself a new goal – that of getting him and his 27 men home safely. He managed to get his crew into three 23-foot (8m) small boats and sailed them to an island called Elephant Island where they could live in relative safety.
He then took one of the three 23 foot (8m) small boats with five of his crew to find help. The six men spent sixteen days crossing eight hundred miles of what are possibly the most dangerous oceans in the world, in the winter of 1916, to eventually reach South Georgia.
However, their test of endurance wasn’t over yet. On reaching South Georgia the six men landed on an uninhabited part of the island, so they then had to cross 26 miles of mountains, glaciers and snowfields, considered impassable at the time, to reach the whaling station on the other side.
Shakleton then managed to secure himself another ship and sailed the eight hundred miles back to Elephant Island where he rescued his men. In short, when Shakleton’s goal of reaching the South Pole ended he set himself a new goal; that of getting all of his crew back home alive.
As a result not one of his men died and his exploits went down in history as one of the greatest feats of leadership ever.
In my book, Understanding Quantum Thinking, there are other great examples of people who have achieved great things in the face of what would seem insurmountable odds. People such as Viktor Frankil who survived three concentration camps in the second world war, and Jim Lovell who, like Shakelton, brought all of his crew home safely from the seemingly doomed Apollo 13 space mission.
There is no such thing as failure - only feedback.
Currently my son is nineteen and his passion is skateboarding and riding his motorbike. He has been skateboarding now for many few years and the things he can do are amazing.
He basically balances on a small wooden board with four small wheels and throws himself of high ramps, jumps across obstacles and does all wonder of amazing tricks and flips.
Some days he spends nearly all day perfecting one trick, and he is regularly coming home with injuries. In fact the nurse at the local hospital now knows him by name! If any of you have seen what these stakeboarders do or have children yourself that do it too, you will know all too well what I am talking about.
So why do it? Well he does it because he enjoys it. He excels at it. He understands that to give up now would mean that all the pain and suffering would be for nothing.
My son's strength is that he finds meaning in what he does. There is purpose in achieving the goal. He is at one with his board and the ramps so the falls don't hurt as much as they used to.
And his attitude to failure - well its the same as any other great achiever. The secret is that he doesn't fail. He uses failure as feedback to monitor and review what he is doing so that he can make adjustments to bring him nearer to achieving his desired goal.
So, maybe a few of us should get 'our skates on' every now and then and do things that challenge us more often. We may not get what we want straight away, but who knows where that will lead you.
And here's a point to think about - You'll never have the opportunity to fail if you never try. And if you don't fail every now and then where will you get the feedback from to let you know what you really want?
A few years ago, when my son was much younger, he was determined to ride his bike without stabilizers. He was determined to ride on two wheels and he was not going to give up until he did it.
As I covertly watched and listened to him I could hear him talking to himself saying things like; "I can do it, I can do it. I can ride on two wheels, I can ride on two wheels. I can ride this bike, I can ride this bike." As is the case with anyone who is determined he eventually managed to ride his bike without the aid of the stabilizers.
However, before he finally achieved it he wobbled and fell over many times. But he kept on going. He didn't lose sight of what he wanted to achieve, and because that picture was so clear in his mind, resolved by a clear and definite purpose and backed up by sheer determination, all of the wobbles and falls finally gave way to the achievement of his highly focused goal.
For me the experience was a host of mixed emotions. I was very proud of the way he was willing himself to do something on his own, but I was also worried that he would fall off and hurt himself. However, this was something that he had to do on his own. He had to do this for himself.
The other day I was watching the great Professor Robert Winston talking about fertility treatment. Dr Winston is a leading pioneer in family medicine who has helped thousands of families have children.
However, what was interesting about what Professor Winston said was that he had failed in seventy-five percent of cases. However, each failure had led him to find new and innovative ways of helping others.
Imagine knowing that any success you have is built on a failure rate of 75%. But he is not alone. Many great athletes also fail over 75% of the time to achieve their goals. Again, their greatness is built on an 80% failure rate.
However, it is the way they deal with failure, the meaning they attribute to failure, and the positive experiences they draw from it, that makes great athletes and great surgeons greater then their contemporaries.
"The More I Try, The Luckier I Get" - Jack Nicklaus
A major general difference between most adults and children is that adults give up too easily. If they try something once and it doesn’t work, that possibly is all the proof they need not to try something different, or do things in a different way.
However, if were to take more chances, if they were willing to try different options or approaches, they would possibly open up new ways of thinking. Sometimes what we are hoping to achieve is just below the surface of our conscious awareness, striving to break through, yet we give up and so the seed isn’t watered and fed and eventually resigns itself to a life below the surface.
Monitor Your Feedback!
Do you know the percentage of the time an aircraft is off course when flying to its pre-determined destination? Well it might surprise you to know that it is off-course approximately 95% of the time! As soon as the aircraft takes off it is affected by wind-speed and various other conditions that take it off-course.
However, because the aircrew continually monitor the aircraft’s progress and flight-path through use of the aircraft’s navigational instruments, the aircraft is continually brought back on track so that it can arrive at the right destination at the right time.
So good are we as a human race of being able to use feedback to monitor and correct, that we can even send a spacecraft millions of miles away into a far flung part of the universe in order for it to arrive at it’s planetary destination to within a few seconds of its expected time of arrival, even if no such craft had even been sent to that planet before!
Yet when it comes down to what we want to achieve we find ourselves incapable of modelling thousands of others who have already achieved that goal, and in doing so left us with a clear map with explicit directions and instructions of how they did it.
In great contrast to this, many find reasons why they couldn’t duplicate what has already been achieved.
Maybe fear of success scares them? Maybe it is a belief that they were not meant to be successful, that success is the privilege of other ‘luckier’ people.
“I hated every minute of training, but I said, don't quit. Suffer now and live the rest of your life as a champion.'' - Muhammad Ali
Our history is abundant with people who kept going when all around them stopped. It took Thomas Edison over ten-thousand attempts before he finally invented the electric light bulb.
After seven thousand attempts he was asked why he kept going when he had failed so many times. Edison's response was; "I haven't failed. I have just found over seven thousand ways not to make a light-bulb."
Then there is the remarkable story of Ernest Shakleton. Shakleton was an explorer whose expedition to the South Pole in 1915 ended in disaster when his ship became trapped and sank in the ice. As a result his goal of reaching the South Pole ended and instead he set himself a new goal – that of getting him and his 27 men home safely. He managed to get his crew into three 23-foot (8m) small boats and sailed them to an island called Elephant Island where they could live in relative safety.
He then took one of the three 23 foot (8m) small boats with five of his crew to find help. The six men spent sixteen days crossing eight hundred miles of what are possibly the most dangerous oceans in the world, in the winter of 1916, to eventually reach South Georgia.
However, their test of endurance wasn’t over yet. On reaching South Georgia the six men landed on an uninhabited part of the island, so they then had to cross 26 miles of mountains, glaciers and snowfields, considered impassable at the time, to reach the whaling station on the other side.
Shakleton then managed to secure himself another ship and sailed the eight hundred miles back to Elephant Island where he rescued his men. In short, when Shakleton’s goal of reaching the South Pole ended he set himself a new goal; that of getting all of his crew back home alive.
As a result not one of his men died and his exploits went down in history as one of the greatest feats of leadership ever.
In my book, Understanding Quantum Thinking, there are other great examples of people who have achieved great things in the face of what would seem insurmountable odds. People such as Viktor Frankil who survived three concentration camps in the second world war, and Jim Lovell who, like Shakelton, brought all of his crew home safely from the seemingly doomed Apollo 13 space mission.
There is no such thing as failure - only feedback.
Currently my son is nineteen and his passion is skateboarding and riding his motorbike. He has been skateboarding now for many few years and the things he can do are amazing.
He basically balances on a small wooden board with four small wheels and throws himself of high ramps, jumps across obstacles and does all wonder of amazing tricks and flips.
Some days he spends nearly all day perfecting one trick, and he is regularly coming home with injuries. In fact the nurse at the local hospital now knows him by name! If any of you have seen what these stakeboarders do or have children yourself that do it too, you will know all too well what I am talking about.
So why do it? Well he does it because he enjoys it. He excels at it. He understands that to give up now would mean that all the pain and suffering would be for nothing.
My son's strength is that he finds meaning in what he does. There is purpose in achieving the goal. He is at one with his board and the ramps so the falls don't hurt as much as they used to.
And his attitude to failure - well its the same as any other great achiever. The secret is that he doesn't fail. He uses failure as feedback to monitor and review what he is doing so that he can make adjustments to bring him nearer to achieving his desired goal.
So, maybe a few of us should get 'our skates on' every now and then and do things that challenge us more often. We may not get what we want straight away, but who knows where that will lead you.
And here's a point to think about - You'll never have the opportunity to fail if you never try. And if you don't fail every now and then where will you get the feedback from to let you know what you really want?
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