We’ve all been discouraged about a path we’re taking, when the various methods we use to reach our goals don’t seem to get anywhere. Upon expressing our frustration and dispiritedness, we’re sure to get someone well trained in American pop culture to respond:

“Power through it!”

“Don’t be a quitter!”

Walk with confidence your own path and see where it takes you. Cadence, art print from Steve Henderson Collections —

“Keep at it — I read about someone who contacted 70 book publishers until the LAST ONE took her book — and now they’re making a movie about it!”

And of course, we’ve all heard — long before business seminar speakers and Influencers erupted like TV preachers — that Once You Start Reading a Book, You’ve Got to Finish It. (The main result of this maxim is that bad authors continue to sell drivel.)

There is much to be said for perseverance. Nothing worth achieving comes easily, especially in a corporate-business-controlled culture that sees ordinary people as nothing more than monetary units to purchase products.

But there’s also much to be said about individual human intelligence, and our ability — and freedom — to realistically look at a situation and determine if it isn’t worth dropping some ideas and developing new ones. Those new ideas, when we start trusting in our instincts, thoughts, and skills, may look very strange and unusual indeed, because they won’t be anything we’ve heard from a seminar speaker, Influencer, or preacher.

And because they don’t look like anything an Influencer insists we do, we doubt whether they’ll work or not because, after all, we just thought of them. And who are we?

Be Your Own Influencer

The artwork, Cadence, answers that question of who we are: we are intelligent, confident people who are walking the individual paths of our unique, precious lives. Where we go depends upon the paths we choose, the steps we take, the decisions we make.

So . . . since where we want to go is unique to who we are, so also is the means by which we get there. Try out new ideas. Give them time. Analyze how they’re doing. Finesse them.

And feel free to drop what doesn’t work and move on to something different.

Yes, it’s true: you can quit too soon. But it’s also true that the more time you spend doing something that just doesn’t work, the less time you have to find something that does.

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