Ripples #1,007: Endurance!
Sep 10, 2018
PEBBLE
Talent is insignificant. I know a lot of talented ruins. Beyond talent lie all the usual words: discipline, love, luck, but most of all, endurance. -James Baldwin
shared by Leslie in Madison, WI
BOULDER
Grit is not just a simple elbow-grease term for rugged persistence. It is an often invisible display of endurance that lets you stay in an uncomfortable place, work hard to improve upon a given interest and do it again and again.
—Sarah Lewis
shared by Monica in Chicago, IL via PassItOn.com
PONDER
I love that so many people enjoy their weekly splashes, and I especially love that every week a few of you let me know that the theme for that particular week must have been written just for you because it arrived just as you needed it.
Well, this week’s theme is actually for ME. It’s been 185 days since I began packing up my stuff to move in with my partner while the house we purchased received some much needed upgrades. On the one hand, I’ve had a roof over my head the entire time and plenty of support from Jamie and my entire network of awesome people. On the other hand, living and running my business out of cardboard boxes has been significantly challenging and a tremendous drain on my energy.
This weekend we finally started the process of shifting our belongings over to the new place which, thanks to the inevitable delays and detours, isn’t quite ready for us. I thought these steps would feel exciting and rewarding, but it proved exhausting and overwhelming (Why is the brand new dishwasher displaying that dire warning? And how are we ever going to get all this construction debris out of here? Can this place ever really feel like home?).
While I’m quite confident these “first world problems” will eventually resolve themselves, it has become increasingly obvious that both my patience and my sanity have been wearing thin. Things got worse when I realized: “Oh, no…it is Sunday afternoon and I haven’t spent any time putting together Ripples. YIKES!”
I plopped down in my relatively dust-free comfy chair and took a few deep breaths (Here now. Here now. Here now!). Then I put on my favorite Pandora station and opened up my laptop: the above quotes popped right out, reminding me that so much of our potential success is about cultivating our capacity to persist.
I hope that you can recognize any challenges that *you* are facing as opportunities to enlist and enlarge your endurance. Rest and hydrate when necessary, and then get back to it. Before you know it, you’ll be farther along than you realized. And you’ll be stronger for the next big challenge that will inevitably arise.
Peace,
Paul
The Ripples Guy
P.S. A hat tip to my pals at Dewey’s Pizza who fed me dinner on Sunday evening and provided the all important wi-fi access so I could queue this issue up to zoom out first thing Monday morning. It takes a village to support a Ripples Guy…. 🙂
