Whitemoney on Why Giving Up Stalls Success

Interviewer: The moment you stepped into the Big Brother House, many liked you. Is this always the case?

Whitemoney: No, it was never the case. Prior to the Big Brother platform, I faced rejection at every level and this includes rejection from women and even from the Big Brother platform too. This is because before I eventually became a housemate this year, I had auditioned for Big Brother four different times before and I was rejected.

Everybody has a breaking point. We get to that point in our individual lives where we feel we cannot carry on. It is that moment in your life where you have explored every option at your disposal and nothing seems to be forthcoming.

Ask yourself. How many times have you failed in life? How many examinations have you written and didn’t pass? How many times have you been rejected by the people you care about the most? How many times have you gone for job interviews or tender that proposal and none seems to actually get back to you?

It is common saying that life is not a bed of roses but beneath the simplicity of that statement underscores the verity of human existence. It is for a fact that nothing comes easily. You often find that what takes little or no effort to gather takes little or no time to scatter.

In life, there are bad times just as there are good times. Challenges will definitely come your way. It is how you react to the diverse problems you encounter in life that determines how successful or how far you will go in life. Different people have different ways of reacting to challenges. Some just allow their problems overwhelm and defeat them, while others put in more effort to overcome the problem.  It is largely about how much longer you can hang in there because tough situations build strong people in the end.

Sometimes we get frustrated and want to give up. No matter how strong our resolve is, giving up is not the best option. In fact, the period we need to keep our pecker up is when we face those challenges that seem insurmountable. The hardest times get even worse when you lose hope. As long as you believe you can do it, you can. But when you give up, you lose! When problems are so big and your strength is no longer enough to carry them, don’t give up. This is because where your strength ends, the grace of GOD begins.

There are days when all we face are obstacles and disappointments that serve as impediments for us to move forward. What do you do at this point? Quit? Or throw in the towel? Of course not! The challenges we face in life are not meant for us to just quit and live on the sidelines. The challenges that we encounter are meant to test out mettle. People who quit going after their dreams feel apologetic for doing so because it is only after they’ve thrown in the towel that they realize that success was actually so close, only if they had persevered.

Notwithstanding, we all get that  feelings of doubt, fear and lack of self-confidence. When you face setbacks after setbacks, problem after problem, it can get very grueling to stay optimistic and keep this  perspective of resilience. It gets very difficult to remind yourself that you are strong and that you can get through whatever problem you are facing. The actual reality is, when you feel like giving up,  there is a lot unutilized  inner strength inside of you that you probably haven’t realized. Everything you need to reach your goal is already inside of you.

This might come as a surprise to you but the reality is people who are successful are not very much different than you. So stop making excuses for yourself! Be thankful for your God-given capabilities and strive for success. You have all the tools inside of you to persevere and keep going. Do you think great minds like David, Job, Bill Gates, Elon Musk, or Martin Luther King Jr.  never dealt with anxiety or difficulties? They absolutely did and their legacies were built only after they had persisted in spite of counterinfluences, opposition, or discouragement. Those moments where we are either mentally/physically drained or aren’t seeing the results that we want.

As we journey through life, we must bear in mind the challenges ahead and brace ourselves for it. So when life tests your faith, you must understand that you have a duty to be proactive by never giving up. You might have failed at a particular task or point in your life. But you must understand that failing ahead is the most important thing. You can either fail ahead or fail backwards. When you fail ahead you are conscious of the process while taking cognizance of the lessons you learn from that failure. This is what makes up experience. Experience is repeated failure which is a build up to excellence. Successful people are as such experienced failures.

Get up again and again until you have achieved your dreams. Keep putting that extra effort in everything you do because life at the end of the day is a consequence of faith and effort.  Yes you can.

Francis Anyanwu is a critic, educational instructor, motivational speaker and writer. He hails from Imo State and writes from Lagos, Nigeria.