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“Do not judge me by my successes, judge me by how many times I fell down and got back up again.” — Nelson Mandela
I have so many stories about trying. Hopefully, you do too.
There are those moments when you want to give up.
Not give up in the sense of ending your life, but simply stop pursuing the things you wanted to achieve.
After setbacks and invisible or nonexistent progress, it can feel like the reasonable thing to do.
You just don’t see anymore how your dreams could work out. They feel too far away and time seems to pass faster than ever.
I know these feelings very well.
There were endless days when I sat down on the couch and said out loud to myself that from now on, I wouldn’t try anything anymore. I’m cursed.
Then I put a frozen pizza in the oven and had that stupid smile on my face like a stubborn child who was finally showing life that it couldn’t f*ck with me.
Most of the time, this happened when several problems came together.
You know those phases.
The job gets hard and your boss is unhappy with your performance. Then you have pain in your lower back, so you pause the gym for a while and become frustrated as hell. The delivery service loses your last order somewhere and now you need to deal with that too.
Your date messages you that she or he doesn’t want to see you again.
And all this happens while you’re convinced that you’re doing your best.
Those are the moments when I tend to look way too far into that dark future. I see myself not achieving my dreams and being miserable, and in those moments that future feels very real.
It feels like everything and everyone is against me, so throwing everything away suddenly starts to look like a reasonable option.
Not trying anymore. Just sitting there and waiting for the end.
For those heavy moments when giving up almost feels like the best choice, I have two strategies I usually use.
1. Return to Base Camp
People who climb huge mountains have base camps where they can rest, get supplies and return when something goes wrong.
In my personal life, I often visualize my own missions like climbing a huge mountain too. That mountain can be a marathon, finding a new job, dating, reading a book, becoming more flexible, developing a new habit or leveling up at work.
And most failures happen somewhere during the climb.
You can get lost, the weather can turn into a storm, you can get injured or simply become exhausted.
The same thing happens in real life. After setbacks, we are often not in the same condition as before.
If I get rejected from several jobs, I lose mental energy.
Thoughts like “I’m not good enough,” “I’m not the kind of guy who gets a job like that,” or “I had big dreams, but apparently I don’t deserve that” start appearing.
That changes how I approach the next interview.
The same applies to dating. After five rejections, I might become cynical and bring that energy into the next date, which probably reduces my chances even more.
Nobody wants to be around a miserable person.
With running, if I don’t improve the way I expected because of an injury, my ego might take over and make the whole situation even worse.
It’s like being halfway to the summit, realizing that you got lost, but still pushing harder because you desperately want to find a way up.
Sometimes the smarter move is to follow the rope back to base camp.
For me, base camp means returning to the most stable version of myself.
It is not the most productive, ambitious or successful version. It is simply the version of me that functions well enough to deal with life again.
I sleep properly, eat well, exercise, hydrate, keep some order at home, get fresh air and try to reduce unnecessary stress.
It also means temporarily stepping away from the mission that exhausted me.
Maybe I stop sending out job applications brainlessly for a week. Maybe I review my dating profile and then spend a month without checking it. Maybe I slow down during my runs even though my ego wants me to push harder.
I focus on the basics until I feel like myself again.
If I don’t do that, I usually make more mistakes. I become hectic, impatient, frustrated and sometimes even arrogant.
Then I miss opportunities because I’m trying to force things while I’m already exhausted.
So if you’re tired from trying, it might be time to go back to base camp for a while.
That doesn’t mean you quit. Not at all.
It means you’re preparing yourself for the next attempt.
2. Zoom In Until It Feels Manageable
Sometimes we lack time to return to base camp because we’re already deep inside a difficult situation.
You’re going through an extremely busy period at work. Or, like me during my marathon in Chicago, you have to deal with an extreme situation right there in the moment.
Giving up is always an option.
You can tell your boss that you quit because you can’t work like this forever. I could have stepped to the side during the marathon and ended the race.
But what if you don’t want that?
You want to keep your job, as I wanted to finish that race regardless of how difficult it became.
In those situations, I use the zoom in strategy.
During that marathon, I slowed my life down to a one heartbeat a minute kind of speed. I zoomed in as much as possible and reduced my peripheral vision until I could only see what was directly in front of me.
I stopped thinking about the glorious version of myself crossing the finish line at another major marathon. I forgot about the pace I had planned and stopped thinking in miles.
Instead, I thought about 800 meters running and 200 meters walking.
That was all.
And that helped me stay on the course until the end. My only thought was that if I could take the next step, I would think about the one after that later.
You can do something similar at work.
Forget for a moment whether you can successfully lead that million dollar project to the end.
Focus on the task currently sitting on your desk. Turn off the notifications, reduce the noise and forget the huge questions for a moment.
Do the next smallest thing you can do, and then think about the one after that.
Don’t predict your whole future from a bad moment
The problem is that we often look into the future and try to predict the outcome based on our current situation.
Unfortunately, or fortunately, we are really bad at that.
Just because we fail once, or even ten times, doesn’t mean we will never succeed.
It doesn’t mean our life will turn into a disaster and that we’re going to die alone, miserable and poor.
But when you’re in the middle of a difficult period, your brain can make that future feel incredibly real.
That’s why I try not to make big decisions about my entire life when I’m exhausted, frustrated or disappointed.
Next time you experience rejection, failure or loss, think about returning to yourself first.
Go back to base camp. Sleep. Eat properly. Get some fresh air. Recover. Get your head clear.
And if you can’t step away because you’re already in the middle of something, zoom in.
Forget the entire mountain and focus only on the next possible step.
You don’t always need to push harder.
Sometimes you just need to recover enough to try again.
Because if you stop trying completely, nobody else will do it for you.
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