Trevon Pollard
Saturday, December 20, 2014
Son of four-time Grammy Award winner Will Smith, Jaden Smith, in a song titled Never Say Never featuring pop star Justin Beiber gave the formula for success as determination. If your ultimate goal is success, then the elimination of the word quit from your vocabulary is critical.
The Oxford dictionary's definition for the word quit is: “To abandon or put aside; forsake.” From generation to generation the word quit has catastrophically destroyed potential successes. Some influencing factors why people have the urge to quit and or choose the path of quitting are: peer pressure, low self-esteem and self-worth, lack of belief in self, and lack of support from others.
The mind is the greatest tool given to man, it plays a critical role in determining the choices we make. How then therefore can we oust quitting from our psyche? Simply by developing a positive mind which yields positive thinking and results in making positive choices. Instead of using the urge to quit as a choice, let us find alternative ways of getting the task done.
Consider this: there might be that difficult phase you are going through but if you overcome it, this might disclose to you the path to your success, but if you quit then your potential success will remain unrealised and you will walk around deeming yourself as unsuccessful and a quitter. A popular quotation used by Vince Lombardi, American football player and NFL coach is; “Winners never quit and quitters never win”.
As humans, it is in our nature to want to take the easy way out. Following this path makes us nothing more than normal and to me it’s pointless. Khalil Gibran once asked “Why settle for competence when there is excellence?” Why accept normal when you can push yourself to achieve greatness?
Consistency brings success. A diamond doesn't start out polished and shining. It once was nothing special: a dirty piece of carbon, nothing exciting at all. But, with the exposure to enough consistent pressure and time it becomes a spectacular stone. You can be that diamond!
Let’s look at ourselves as diamonds and realize that quitting would never allow us to reap success. In fact, consider adversity to be a fact of life. We can't control it but what we can control is how we react to it. Think about it, if Steve Jobs was a quitter there would not be IPods, iPhones or Apple Inc., and the list goes on and on: Bill Gates , Jay Z, Martin Luther King Jr and others.
As we approach the New Year, let our resolution be to put an end to quitting mentality. If applied we would see a better you in 2015. Just remember: Don’t Quit! Every difficulty is an opportunity in disguise.
