Why You Should Never Ever Give In
Give It All It Takes
Taking on an uncommon career path or learning a new skill can seem challenging at first. However, it is worth the effort.
To reach the peak of your chosen profession, it’s expected you show up every day and put in the required efforts. Yet even with these measures in place, sometimes there is nothing to show for one’s hard work.
Considering this reality, many choose to give up while suppressing any chance of succeeding at their chosen line of work.
However, it won’t be long until you find the same quitters trying their hand at another “promising” career path. They repeat this cycle until life and reality finally catches up with them, ending up as men or women with extensive knowledge but little or no expertise.
Sadly, this urge to abandon your current career path and go for a more promising one bothers many people and generates series of confusion in them.
Rather than giving in to this urge, how can you help your situation?
It Pays to Stay Focused
Recently, after a deep reflection came an answer. In my experience, starting a new career after abandoning one is far more costly than persevering on a career path. The euphoric feeling of starting something new can be so deceiving.
What this implies, in simple terms, is that it’s better to maintain a focus on a sole, long-term goal than to dissipate your energy equally in all directions. The aftermath of the latter is always discomforting.
Giving in Robs Us of Our Ultimate Reward
Colin Powell, the first African-American Secretary of State, once made a claim, which turned out to be critical to the recruitment process at top companies, “Hire for strength, not for lack of weakness.”
Given our goal is to get hired, offer our skill sets as service to others or succeed in our desired positions, we have to be proficient and prepare hard on the required skill sets, rather than being a jack of all trades.
Take, for example. We expect a software engineer at a technology firm to be proficient at developing algorithms that solve real-life problems. No matter how knowledgeable he or she is in Marketing, nobody cares. Though that might be a plus as firms also appreciate the versatility.
But what your employers truly care about is your ability to do well on your job, and you gain this through mastery and consistency.
So rather than just diversifying your options, which isn’t bad in itself, pay attention to that which is required of you in your chosen career.
Good Things Take Time
You’ve probably heard of the cliché, “Anything worthwhile takes time.” Though a common saying, there lies in it a profound lesson critical to our breakthrough.
As a result, rather than being impatient and worried, remember that whatever career you choose or skill you have mastered will not yield immediate results. You must first invest a great deal of time.
Final Thoughts
Rather than moving in circles, pick a few skill sets critical to success in the career of your choosing and laser-focus on them.
Keep this at the back of your mind: the ultimate cost of giving in is far greater than the cost of persevering to the end.
Winston Churchill beautifully conveys the significance of determination and perseverance on a set goal in an age-long speech,
“Never give in. Never give in. Never, never, never, never — in nothing, great or small, large or petty — never give in, except to convictions of honour and good sense. Never yield to force. Never yield to the apparently overwhelming might of the enemy.”
So stay focused! Best of lucks!
