Written by: Rana Khaled Awwad
Edited by: Monda Salem, Mona Timor Shehata
Published by: Amira Haytham
I always ask myself this question and spontaneously find myself answering: “Yes, I always cultivate power more than I harvest, and the outcome is not always sufficient to compensate for the power invested in the income.”
I admit that these thoughts are deadly; I’m experiencing them now; especially when it comes to these questions: What should I do more? Did I care less than I should?! But I did a lot and gained nothing in return! That’s not the result I expected when I invested all my power to achieve it! I don’t fit in this place?
It seems like you’re blowing a balloon with a hole or pushing a wall; both won’t give you any response no matter how hard you try each time.
But maybe that’s the problem; that we keep pushing a wall. Or in other words: that we keep exerting efforts in the wrong direction.
It’s just like a puzzle; you force some pieces to fit with others and you exert a lot of efforts to let them fit; you strive hard to reach this goal, but they don’t fit. Simply, because they aren’t meant to fit; they are not compatible and the effort is not exerted In the right place. You will end up either breaking the pieces or your energy will be depleted.
It could be applied in a lot of situations in our lives: studying, working, relationships, where you keep investing power in the wrong direction.
But how could I possibly know that I am on the right track?
Besides that, our intuition plays a great role in determining the direction of our progress, you can simply infer whether you’re exerting effort on the right track or not by observing the results, even if they are not the desired ones.
As an SAT student, I’ve always been struggling to achieve the score I want for the first 4 trials and never attained it. Even if my scores were good, I visualized myself as a failure, because I never got to get the score I set my mind on, although I’ve always achieved higher whenever I enter a trial than the previous score. Each time the scores came out, I got depressed and cried a lot no matter how high my score increased; it’s still not the score I strived very hard to get. However, I never stopped trying and I kept this in mind “Trial-error-trial-error-trial-error-trial-IT” then no matter how many time I try and fail to reach my goal, one day I will have IT.
On my fifth trial, I got the score of my dreams finally; I was extremely happy because I tried very hard, invested a lot, tried a lot, and after failing a lot; I got it, my target. It tastes different when you achieve your dream after several trials and a lot of work: it’s like the taste of water after being extremely thirsty from running a thousand miles!
Afterwards, I came to the realization that the previous four trials were just leading me to the success of the fifth.
There’s a statement that may validate my point: “You keep trying to cut a tree 99 times and, when it doesn’t fall, you give up. Until somebody else comes and tries just one more time, the hundredth, and does it!”
In some occasions we truly do the best we could; we exert a lot of energy to reach something with keeping our eyes on our targets, but we are too hasty to find the results, and never consider the possibility that maybe the efforts we exert are leading us closer to the target. Consequently, if you didn’t reach it today, you are definitely taking a step closer to reach it tomorrow. All what you have to do in this journey is to never give up. Keep going as long as you see a progress, even if it’s minor, or not YET the desired goal.
Psychologically, our past experiences are stored in our memories, and subconsciously control our decisions. We have lived long enough to conclude from the environment and atmosphere of both practical and personal lives, whether it’s going on the right or the wrong track, whether we are repeating past mistakes or not, or if we are deluded in the wrong direction. That’s the benefit of making mistakes, even if you didn’t have any experience before and going through new ones with a lot of obstacles and false decisions; they are guidelines for whatever comes next, sooner or later. That’s the benefit of going through a crisis, knowing how to handle them gives you experience and guidance to proceed with your path.
And speaking of experiences, if I had ever learnt something it’s to give up on giving up.