Sunday, October 16, 2011

Persisitence + Patience = Success

What2Say2Day? This one is inspired by an FB comment from one of my friends this morning. What do you do if your first attempt is an epic fail? Do you stop trying or blame something and/or someone else for the failure? Do you wait for a mentor or person-in-charge to correct it for you? Or, do you (as the adage goes) try and try again? (Raise your hand if you picked the last option.) This goes back to yesterday's thoughts on where it seems our society is headed. We've become accustomed to instant gratification. If we don't know it we Google it instead of using a dictionary or looking for an article or book written about it or using an encyclopedia (who remembers those?). We go to a drive-through and expect our food ready when we get to the window. We want our electronic messages sent to us as soon as they're sent to us. As I pondered the Facebook comment I remembered a fact: it took Thomas Edison over 10,000 tries to get the light bulb to work right. Over 10,000 tries! Imagine if he gave up because it wasn't instant gratification. (Does anyone else see the irony - light bulb vs. instant gratification.) Here's another example for you sports people: a baseball player is considered a successful batter if he doesn't get a hit 7 out of 10 times at bat. Babe Ruth held both the home run and strike out records consecutively. Imagine if he decided all that failure wasn't worth it.  Just one more example - Jesus' ministry took 3 years on earth, and even now, after his death on a cross 2000 years ago, he's still at work. Imagine if Jesus wanted instant gratification and decided to just give up. Now, imagine what you can do if you remain persistent and add a little patience.

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