Today is September 8 and the Navigate the Chaos question to consider is “How often do you remind yourself to never quit?”
People who navigate the chaos know that things will go wrong, that they will run low on money, or that the road they are traveling seems all up hill, but they never quit.
Edgar A. Guest was a very popular poet for several decades during the twentieth century, and his poems appeared in a syndicated newspaper column.
On March 3, 1921 he published a poem entitled “Keep Going” and wrote:
“When things go wrong, as they sometimes will, When the road you’re trudging seems all up hill, When the funds are low and the debts are high, And you want to smile, but you have to sigh, When care is pressing you down a bit, Rest if you must—but don’t you quit. Life is queer with its twists and turns, As every one of us sometimes learns, And many a failure turns about When he might have won had he stuck it out; Don’t give up, though the pace seems slow—You may succeed with another blow. Often the goal is nearer than It seems to a faint and faltering man, Often the struggler has given up When he might have captured the victor’s cup, And he learned too late, when the night slipped down, How close he was to the golden crown. Success is failure turned inside out—The silver tint of the clouds of doubt, And you never can tell how close you are, It may be near when it seems afar; So stick to the fight when you’re hardest hit—It’s when things seem worst that you mustn’t quit.”
Wrestler John Cena told a crowd after one of his matches that “Sometimes you can try so hard at something and still fail. But every time you fail it's painful. It causes sadness. It causes disappointment. I've often said a man's character is judged by what he does when his back is against the wall. So, no matter how severe the failure. You never give up. You push forward. You brush yourself off. You adapt. You overcome.”
How often do you remind yourself to never give up?