I’m Done (At the Bottom – Part 5)

I had just failed to land a job at the same company for the fifth time. I was an excellent fit for the job and probably the leading candidate, but the company had decided to eliminate the position.

But this failure didn’t phase me. It only hurt for a moment because I had learned to bounce right back instinctively. In effect, I had become immune to the enduring pain this once would have caused.

That evening, I took off for my two-mile power walk feeling fine. But I must have been thinking about my recent failure. Something was different this time. Typically, after a loss, I would quickly move on to the next opportunity, plan, strategy, etc. And I would have the energy and the will to pursue it.

But now, there was no next opportunity, and my desire to keep fighting was

gone. Near the halfway point of my walk, I came to a distressing revelation:

This challenge was coming to an end, and I had lost. I had tried as hard as I could, but it wasn’t enough. It’s not as if I was quitting, but the game clock had hit triple-zero, and this game was over.

I uttered a two-word prayer: I’m Done. It didn’t mean I was done with life – more like life was done with me. And I wasn’t done with THE CREATOR. It was just an admission that I could not continue in this mission.

The walk back home was brutal. I thought about what this failure would mean. I was working in a job that utilized none of my skills and was failing tremendously at it. I hated it, and they were not pleased with me either. They had tried to get me to quit four months earlier, but I had hung on – by a thread. Now I was loosening my grip; I wouldn’t last there much longer.

I thought about what the next few years would be like having lost this fight. I wasn’t afraid of hitting the bottom again. I had been there once and survived. I was scared I wouldn’t have the strength to crawl back out of the pit again.

But prayers are one of the great mysteries of life. We think our prayers must be lengthy, eloquent pleas, filled with all sorts of bargaining and reasons why we should receive the desired result. Yet, we see instances in THE BOOK where people are so distraught, they can’t even speak the words, and their prayer is still answered. We try to manipulate THE CREATOR by our prayers, which is an absurd concept. Yet, we do this repeatedly, and it never works out. I have come to believe that honesty is a crucial component of prayer that we conveniently overlook. THE CREATOR wants us to be honest above all else.

I’m Done on the surface seems like such a feeble prayer. It lacks fervency. It lacks substance. It even lacks faith. It is an admission of failure. It is a surrender. It is devoid of hope, not even including a request.

But there was a lot of meaning packed into those two words. It reflected four years of striving, four hard years of personal and spiritual growth. I was a much different person than when this challenge began, but now I sensed this struggle was coming to an end, and it was. The only redeeming quality of this prayer is it was honest, brutally honest. I’m Done seems so ineffectual, and yet it turned out to be the second most powerful prayer I have ever uttered.

My instincts were indeed correct. I was done. This ordeal was about to come to an end, but not at all how I expected. Three weeks later, I received an email from a former colleague who said he wanted to discuss an opportunity. I thought this would be contract work which I had discussed with him previously, and that I was not interested in.

“We have a position coming available in a few months. We’ve discussed it, and we think no one can do this job better than you.”

This, after not being in the industry for years. No resume. No interview. Just boom! A job that fully utilizes my best skills. A job more prestigious than the one I was suddenly separated from four years prior.

Now you could think I got lucky, but I believe many times “you make your own luck”. I had crawled out the pit. I had stayed active. I had stayed visible. I had made progress.

So often, we become frustrated at our lack of progress. We dismiss only making it to the middle ground because we desire the top of the mountain. But NEVER, NEVER, discount the progress that you have made. It is valuable ground you have secured. And often, that middle ground provides you with a launching pad to greater things.

I had lost every battle in this conflict. I had been defeated every time. By definition, I was a loser. But I never saw myself as one. I didn’t define myself that way. I pushed on regardless of prior defeats. And in the end, I lost every battle – yet still won the war.

 

 

 

 

 

Resilience, Persistence, Perseverance (At the Bottom – Part 4)

 “You can lose every battle, yet still win the war”- Don Ake

Through my life experience, including my climb out of the pit, I believe that one of the most valuable traits one can possess is resilience.

Oxford Languages defines resilience as:

1.    the capacity to recover quickly from difficulties; toughness. 

2.    the ability of a substance or object to spring back into shape; elasticity. 

If you have resilience, you can endure anything life throws at you and bounce back. If you still have air in your lungs and the diagnosis is not terminal, then you will come fighting back.

However, saying you want to be resilient is like saying you want to climb Mt. Everest. You may achieve your goal, but not without a lot of effort, practice, and a great deal of pain. You become resilient by failing repeatedly.

The long climb back is full of difficulties and failures. You will develop the capacity to recover. You will gain toughness because you have no other choice.

There are two other traits you will pick up along the way:

Persistence: firm or obstinate continuance in a course of action in spite of difficulty or opposition.   

And                          

Perseverance: persistence in doing something despite difficulty or delay in achieving success.

This is going to be a long, arduous journey where to face difficulties and opposition. It will involve frequent losses and a long delay in getting to where you need to be.

How does perseverance work?

You tell yourself you are going to quit …

BUT YOU DO NOT QUIT

You convince yourself that it would be better if you quit …

BUT YOU DO NOT QUIT

You list all the advantages of quitting …

BUT YOU DO NOT QUIT

You tell yourself you are never going to win

BUT YOU DO NOT QUIT

You endure emotional pain that grinds on you

BUT YOU DO NOT QUIT

That Grind

And it is a heavy grind. You are going to lose, then lose again and lose some more. Lose, lose, lose, lose again.

You get punched in the face so often that you become impervious to the pain. This is not entirely a good thing. Pain exists for a reason. Some friends asked why I was so persistent. The honest answer was: Because it doesn’t hurt anymore.

However, this is what it takes to ultimately achieve success. If you are committed to climbing out of the pit and getting back to where you were, this is the price you must pay. Unfortunately, the longer the fall, the longer the climb back. There are no shortcuts. You may not be responsible for ending up in the pit, but you are responsible for climbing out. So climb, and don’t stop climbing. Resilience … Persistence … Perseverance                                     

The Back Story

Of course, the only way I could describe everything I have written to this point is to have experienced it myself. My ability as a writer is based on my capacity to feel emotions intensely and express those emotions in words.

I was plunged into the pit years ago due to a loss of a long-time job. I should not have reacted this poorly to that event (a subject of a future post), which is my responsibility. It was also my responsibility to climb out of this pit.

If you charted my progress at that time, it was slow and painful. It looked like this:

Loss, loss, loss, big loss, loss, terrible loss, loss, stupid loss, loss, painful loss, dispiriting loss ……

Through the process, I learned resilience. I learned to bounce back, much like a shortstop, after diving for a ground ball instantly. It is the most valuable skill I acquired during this process.

Persistence? Oh, there was obstinate continuous, alright. I was turned down by the same company five times for five different positions.

Perseverance? There was much difficulty and pain, and my climb back took years.

After four years of battles, if my internal condition was visualized, my clothes were in tatters and contained a couple of near-miss bullet holes. My face was bruised and battered, and there were numerous bloodstains.

I had fought as hard as I could and I had lost every battle – every one. At that point, you could have considered me a loser. You could have pitied me.

And then suddenly, unexpectedly, I won the war. (“How”, explained in the next post).

“You can lose every battle, yet still win the war”- Don Ake