Age wrinkles the body. Quitting wrinkles the soul. – Douglas MacArthur
"An elephant is as wrinkled as wrinkled can get, but he always finishes and never forgets!" Or should I quit trying to write poetry? 8)
What does that mean?
This was another neat quote. I think it is a bit odd, but makes it’s point quite well. It’s also not the most appealing analogy I had ever heard, either. A wrinkled what? But if you consider wrinkles in the skin as signs of aging and infirmity, then the quote makes a little more sense.
What I believe the quote is saying is that as age will cause infirmity in the body, so will constant (and consistent) quitting cause infirmity in the soul. Obviously, the quote is urging us not to follow in that path, to keep things going, to keep working until you succeed, to never quit. Because nobody wants to have a wrinkled soul, right?
Why is perseverance important?
It is my belief that habitually quitting, making a habit out of giving up, causes damage to you deep inside. Your belief in yourself is damaged. Your ability to carry out simple tasks begins to falter. This belief can seep into other areas of your life, causing you to start seeing your whole life as a failure. That’s not a great place to be, is it?
Instead, by persevering, you can show yourself that you can stick with it, that you can succeed, even if it’s only an occasional thing. Sometimes an attempt ends in failure, but you can always re-assess the situation, and either try again, or determine that the effort required is not worth the result, and declare the task as having ended. But you didn’t quit. Do you see the difference?
Where can I apply this in my life?
When I first saw this quote, I wondered if there were surgeons who could do a ‘soul lift’ procedure to help get rid of the wrinkles. Well, at least I thought it was funny. But on a more serious note, have you ever gone though a phase in your life where you quit almost everything you started?
When I was a teenager, I had very little self control, wide ranging interests, and a serious problem with attention span. That lead to hundreds, perhaps thousands, of partially completed projects, scattered throughout my life. Wood working, metal working, writing, reading, music, photography, movies (with my brother and an old 8mm camera), pyrotechnics, and so many other projects just quit because I lost interest.
This became a problem when I started believing that I couldn’t finish anything that I started. It didn’t help that I had the scattered remains of hundreds of failures all around me. That can make for one fairly depressed teenager. Fortunately, I managed to keep focused enough on a few things to keep my soul from becoming terminally wrinkled.
Grab some paper and write down a couple of things you quit. Please don’t consider it ‘quitting’ if you stopped taking the piano lessons you mom made you take, or if you stopped doing something because you were no good at it (like me and drawing, painting, etc). Now write down at least as many things that you have completed.
With both of these lists in front of you, consider how good you are at finishing things. If you had to add another dozen to each list, which list would be easier for you to find additional items to add? Consider the complexity and difficulty of each of the items. Then think about how long ago each was, and how much time was going to take.
How did you fare overall in this assessment? Even if you didn’t do as well as you would have liked (and who did, really?), remember that past performance doesn not guarantee future results, right? You can change if you want. You could even select one of the projects you quit and finish it, and that might just tip the balance sheet a little in your favor.
Find something on your list, or in the deep crevices of your wrinkled soul, that you can pick back up and finish. Start as small as you like, but get busy with something. Take a moment to assess why it was dropped, figure out what steps it will take to get it back on track and completed, and detail out the first step or two.
Then select one of the details and do it now. Right now! Nothing succeeds like success, so finish the first step. Persevere, and finish the project. Then start and finish the next one. The journey of the rest of your life will start with your next action, so make it a good one. And if it doesn’t turn out as well as you would like, remember the rest of your life starts with the action you take after that. 8)
Keep on trying. Persevere.
From: Twitter, @dpbkmb
confirmed at : http://www.brainyquote.com/quotes/quotes/d/douglasmac378358.html
Photo by Connor Tarter
