Never Quit: Plan B

More about this guy who never quit. We should all have it so tough. Look what he overcame. When I think of all the sacrifices others have made so I can have a "normal" life, sometimes taking for granted my health, and then someone like this comes along, well, it's a good reminder of what is important in life.

Enjoy the short video and watch it to the very end.

The Amazing Transformation of a Guy Who Didn’t Give Up!

Sharon

Not Quitting

Nano has been a bust for me this year, and unless I pull "two-dayer", which I don't do any longer, I will not make the word count. Of course, I could figure my edits in that, but they aren't new words, or at least half of them aren't, so that would be cheating. My new book comes out in December, and there were last-minute edits I chose to do, and I hadn't planned on them right in the middle of Nano. It was the right thing to do.

But I'm not quitting my Nano goal. I'm going on to see how many I can do. Complicated with family drama over the Thanksgiving Holiday, which always seems to happen. As someone much wiser than me said, "It rarely is a Normal Rockwell moment," meaning, my expectations almost always exceed what happens in real time. But getting real has been what this year has been about, so I accept that. No, my dinner was perfect, was not a Norman Rockwell picture, but pretty darned close. It was Sharon's family, and that's more than fine for me.

My 3 year old granddaughter brought a stepstool into the kitchen and said, "Grandma, I help you now." I like that she didn't ask me, she told me what she was going to do. Good going, little one. You have learned something at 3 it took me many years to master. Her sweet little face looking up at me caused me to realize that, of course, everything goes better with sugar. And of course I said yes. And as daunting as the other drama of the holidays can be, it is the beginning of her life, her memories, and I'm here and present and clear of mind to enjoy them, and help make them happy ones. What better gift can I give my grandchildren than the gift of a happy childhood? Not me alone. It does take a family. But I'm part of that family, even though parts of it don't work well.

That's what's real. That is something I am thankful for.

Don't Give Up

I had a full day yesterday. We had the keynote luncheon speech by Sherrilyn Kenyon and today I got to talk with her for a few minutes and get her to sign her book.

She has been on the NYT Best-Seller list 16 times. That's a writer who has a lot of dedicated readers.

But life hasn't always been easy for Sherrilyn. Her grace and courage, in the lean years, in the years when she was building her career and during the setbacks are what make her so great. Did you know she was homeless at one time, with a new baby born with lots of medical problems and hung out in a hospital waiting room with her baby because they wouldn't kick her out? She almost gave up writing, didn't even have the money for a stamp to send off a query letter, and carefully stole one of two stamps her husband was hoarding in his wallet. That query letter changed her life.

She talked about getting an editor rejection letter (I paraphrase): "Don't ever submit to this house again. We will never be interested in this author's work." Instead of giving up, it fired her on.

Some things really hit home for me. We all think we have more than our fair share of grief and bad luck. But she doesn't even stop much to think about it. As she said better than I ever could, "You can measure a person's talent, but you can't measure the fire in their soul." She wanted it. She wanted it bad. And her dream came true, in spite of some odds most people wouldn't ever recover from.

I like this quote too: "If you sit by the river long enough, you'll see the bodies of your enemies float by." I take that to mean, if you keep working hard, the defeats in your life will be washed away by the fire in your belly, the desire to become a successful best-selling NYT author.

You see, I think Sherrilyn would agree with me. Adversity doesn't make a person. It reveals a person. You don't overcome your obstacles, you outlast them.

What about you? How do you outlast the obstacles that keep you from being the success you could be? How do you keep your locomotive going so you are unstoppable?

Never Give Up, Never Surrender

I loved Galaxy Quest. The law of unintended consequences made this a funny twist on real vs. simulation. The "simulators" became real, actually accomplished in reality what they were acting in the show.

On day "F" I blogged about Failing Forward. Giving up and surrendering is not failing. Failing is trying to do something, and not succeeding. It is as much a part of our every day life as breathing or walking. But giving up and surrendering, well that's a horse of another color.

My first manager in Real Estate used to tell me he could tell when someone had given up. He said they would walk into his office with that imaginary spear through their middle, have the gait and the look in the eye that told him they were quitting. Just couldn't take it anymore. Someone had gotten to them. He used to tell me it made him angry that someone who shouldn't matter, caused a good person to give up.

My SEAL friends know that by the end of their training, just before they graduate, the instructors could ask them to do anything and they'd do it without considering the consequences to their own person, not consider the pain. At a certain point that line is crossed and that person would never quit. Never.

Unlike failure, quitting just ends the game. I think it was Robert Louis Stevenson who said the difference between a published author and an unpublished author is a published author writes until he's published. The unpublished author quits.

Some days it seems like it's hard to put one foot in front of the other, or there are two steps forward and one back. But if we keep moving, keep writing, keep working on our passion, we eventually get there.

Maybe it's just as easy as deciding there isn't anything out there that will make us quit.

So we won't.

What about you?