The important element in the art of not giving up.

“IF one had a dream there will be inevitably obstacles along the way, whether it be turmoil or heartache, but if one has faith and perseverance one will find their way” said Diana Nyad in her speech on never giving up and perseverance towards your life time goal. It makes much more sense and a cause for inspiration when it comes from the women whose lifetime goal was to swim from Cuba to florida at the age of 64 and the most important part “She did it”.

However in the debate towards the art of never giving up ,while we attribute a lot of importance to perseverance , hard work , dedication and the urge to achieve we forget a very important ingredient , probably the neutron in the atom : Playing to your abilities . While the other elements like hard work,faith perseverance come out as the positrons or the protons the real weight falls in this neutral attribute which gives the atom of not giving up it’s strength.

The picture depicts the role of deploying your ability as a strength in the battle of never giving up. The man with 48 % chance of survival can speed read technical material and he does jus that. Converting a 48 % chance of survival to a 100 % chance of never giving up. Zinedine Zidane who was traditionally a slow , skinny silent midfield creator for France was rejected in his early life by an Algerian coach saying he could not play football for the same reasons. He developed his skinny body into a well balanced one later on in his career but he used what he had in his early days to get into a wonderful world cup winning squad and played a pivotal role with his “slow and skinny” legs with his craft of accurate passing.

The theoretical constituents of perseverance and faith can not be ignored but the practical one of ability can have the most pivotal role when one decided to march towards a goal with deciding to never give up. To illustrate let’s talk about Sachin Tendulkar. Harsha Bhogle once in his speech at IIM Ahemdabad said that if he raised this question , “Talent vs Attitude” to some one about sachin ,99 % answered talent but when he actually saw sachin practice in the nets he described it as attitude. What would have been the outcome had Sachin decided to have the same attitude of faith and perseverance in classical singing or maybe lata mangeshkar in the field of cricket. It’s safe to assume that they were well educated about their abilities in their early phases of life and took on the right task based on their ability.

Ability plays a major role in deciding the pertinent question people of my age are confronted with everyday “Where will I be when I will be retiring”. We all need to focus on our abilities and not only our desire to succeed coupled with (and again) “faith and perseverance”,as it makes no sense for an “excellent” film critique to be a “hard working” investment banker.

Written byAbhinav Verma

Based on : https://www.facebook.com/humansofnewyork/photos/pb.102099916530784.-2207520000.1396025092./631498613590909/?type=3&theater