The Subtle Art of Not Giving Up (but shining a light)

Okay, so … it’s time to write something.

You are highly motivated and got a list full of something inspiring to tell, pick one next thing but … you feel there’s something missing and you don’t know where to start.

Relatable! Guess what just happened to me! But then it clicked!

I discovered a common thread in my life!

👉 Task for you: sit for a while and think, to find some threads in your life, too! This is just for you.

Actually there are more of such threads, some of them surprisingly parallel from my perspective, but well, okay, let’s focus on this one:

Recently, I recognized that I was able to motivate myself early on, even when things got really bad, I got up again and took some next steps.

Getting up and getting better

During the pandemic, I was hit hard.

You know, there were those lockdown rules, we were obliged to reduce infections as much as we could. Nothing to enjoy outside except from going for a walk alone. No pool, no cinema. Not enough energy for a run.

Only some months later, one person could be a guest of another household. We shared food, played Chinese chess and talked about everything.

But at the beginning, I sat there alone, had no job opportunities, so nothing to do besides committing to some half-baked GitHub repositories of mine which nobody would need in the end. Just for learning.

I felt disconnected just like the Martian (see https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Martian_(film) for reference). There were days when I was stuck with myself, so I asked the stars above, tell me please, exactly why am I going to have breakfast anyway, when everything goes down?

Sat there, dropped my toast, then I started thinking it over: I needed to do something just for fun to train my brain. Indoor sports, yoga. Python programming. Watching TV when Covid could not be a topic. Reading. Playing some sort of table-tennis by myself to train reactions. Just – anything.

But the best motivation was to meditate visualizing things I would be able to do when the pandemic was over. I didn’t actively make them up, just followed some ideas that came to me. Without all of those nasty rules. Now there was a new silver lining. A new horizon, inspiring and amazingly real, albeit with no map or idea which way to go …

Motivating others

It was only over time that I discovered that I was also able to motivate others. I had long suspected that I wasn't actually able at all to do that!

Okay, so here just one example.

I remember when I was in Munich for learning to write software with C++. It was one day of the last course week, when a participant said he wanted to give up, delete his project to starts new one. I said no, just insert some console printouts to find what’s going on there.

Back then, a fancy thing called debugging didn’t even exist in my world view 😁).

That was enough to get himself back on track.

Other examples include:

• Motivated a peer student to finish her PhD thesis (to then be part of a yearly meeting for honoring graduates, to meet her later husband but that’s a different story… ✨)

• Motivated a friend to think differently, not to give up, but to do some steps to improve the situation and way of working on that great idea instead of giving up halfway … ✨

TL;DR Motivating has become a skill of mine I keep on using — both for myself and for others, too. ✨

Photo by Frankie Cordoba on Unsplash

I am not into turning on paid soon. But if this resonated with you, or you are even thinking »oh how nice«, please consider to buy me a little coffee here: https://ko-fi.com/danielagrothe