Do you remember your first time? Giving Up?
By: Shane Utley
Tags: Personal Branding, Entrepreneurship, Personal Development, Personal Growth, Human Potential

Can you even remember the first time that you pushed against something, and it pushed back hard enough that you surrendered and quit? The very first challenge that you were not up to and able to meet. Do you remember how giving up made you feel? The relief of the pressure that had just been removed, closely followed by feelings of being ashamed. Shame on You, you weren’t good enough. You did not run fast enough. You did not play the piano well enough. You could not spell a word that I will not even attempt to type.

As children, we are taught to do our best to avoid failure. I am afraid this has been shortened to simply “avoid failure.” That is quite a tall order. I do believe that doing your best will minimize failure. It does leave the question, what is your best? Is your best one day, the same as your best on another day? I believe there are plenty of books out there, as well as articles here that address your relationship with failure.

The relationship with giving up is something that I had to spend some time working on in my life. You might be like I was, giving up too soon and too often. Giving up on your health by skipping the gym today, because you wanted to sleep late. Giving up on your business by putting a necessary task off until tomorrow. Giving up on your mind, but not finishing that book or finding time to properly relax. Giving up on your soul by not feeding it. Giving up on your relationships because you don’t have the time.

I highlight these five areas of life because if out of balance, they will compete with each other. Which domain will win? None of them because you will be the odd one out. What do you value in each of these areas?

What are your Health goals What are your Financial goals What are your Learning / Mental goals What are your Spiritual goals, if any What are your Relationship goals

Take some time to discover these. Do goals for the immediate future, short term, and long term. Write them out and look for any possible conflicts and work them into synergy with one another.

I remember when I was in my 20’s and getting a new girlfriend. My relationships were excellent, health, finances, school, and playing guitar all suffered. I had no spiritual life at the time. Take away the girlfriend, and nothing was going right. Again, discover where you are going in life and how each of these areas can help, and you will be much less likely to give up on them.

For years, finances were my demon or the arch enemy to my hero. I didn’t have a solid goal in that area of my life, so more always sounded better. I decided that I didn’t like my job and started looking for a better way, a few times.

I treated my new business as a new relationship and neglected the other areas of my life. This was not that hard to do since I did not have any goal there either. I would reach a certain point, and for whatever reason, give up and quit. Ah, that relief of the pressure, but then the feelings of shame. Even though I was driving down a road with no idea where I was going.

When I started training with Legendary Marketing to work on my Sales and Marketing skills, I did have my values and goals for each of the critical areas of my life together, but they helped me bring even more clarity to them. Now I have my values and goals, I know my destination and the team at Legendary to assist if additional directions are needed.