Push Your Boundaries

Dear All,

That afternoon was the saddest day in Tommy’s life. He stood on the veranda of his onetime bustling shop and watched the tax inspectors as they chatter on their way back to the waiting car after sealing his shop. Its true Tommy had not paid his taxes for the last quarter. All of that was linked to the incident of the previous week when some bailiffs sent by his bank forcefully took a way a huge chunk of stock from his shop for auctioning to recover a loan he had taken at the bank and was unable to repay.

Tommy was convinced he had hit-a-stonewall. Driving home that evening, he told himself it was over with the shop, he assured himself that he had put in his possible best. It was this thinking that build inertia in him until the rents of the shop expired four months later and the landlord started bugging him.

Tell you what, I have read over a hundred James Hadley Chase novels. Around my fifth novel, I refused to go to bed until I finished the last page and that’s how I will spent sleepless nights reading the novels that held me spellbound. That’s when I first understood that it could be difficult to give up, but I didn’t think my perseverance was a problem.

Just like Tommy, you might be experiencing a situation that isn’t working and wondering whether you should persevere a little longer. You might wonder whether more time will allow you to fix the problem or reach the goal. After all, people always say, “Never give up.”

Get the point, never give up is not a suggestion that you keep doing the things you do in the wrong way. Never give up actually means that when you hit a stone wall, change your modus operandi. Why not, try to paint a beautiful scenario on the stonewall and in doing so, your creative mind will spring up new surprises that could turn the tides to your favor.

As you set out on the quest for success, you have to know firsthand that there are bound to be setbacks on the path to reaching your goals. Sometimes your circumstances seem so daunting that you feel like calling it quits. In actuality, you may be inches away from reaching your destination, and so now is not the time to throw in the towel.

Tommy never took time off to think about how far he had come already. He did not look at how things were when he started and how they were at the moment his shop was sealed. Sure, he fell flat a couple of times, but he had equally made a great deal of progress especially in understanding the undercurrents of his business. If only he could remember the amount of strength it took him to get started in the first place, he would try to cultivate it again to push his business towards the finish line.

Here is the hard message I have for you today: If you never do anything uncomfortable or difficult or stressful, and always stay well within your boundaries, you won’t evolve or develop as a human being. If you keep doing all the nice and easy and familiar things, all you will be is: the same. Until the end of time. You won’t grow. Your soul will get bored from just living. Your body gets tired of just being. Your mind will start shutting down, deprived of sensual stimulation. Eventually, you will die. Another useless life.