If you are like me, you are your own greatest critic and hold yourself to ridiculous standards that you’d never expect your peers to adhere to. A strength and a weakness, this kind of thinking can be taxing. Your victories are short lived as you move onto the next challenge. Your obstacles to your goals become intolerable and maddening.
Driven, challenging the status quo, lifelong learner, pursuer of excellence your blessing and curse. Often you may achieve things easily and little wins become addictive. When faced with a bigger, longer, more complicated beast of a challenge I become consumed by its seeming unconquerable nature.
Don’t give up. An elephant is eaten one bite at a time. For me. Because I’ve left too many elephants uneaten. Resistance I expect but consistent opposition? No thank you. I’ll leave that wolly mammoth alone and hope someone else cleans up its mess.
Where does this leave the world? With lots of small fires lit by the inspirational nurse but no all consuming fire to take the trash to ash for good. Is this God’s way of telling me I must be patient and persevere?
I want my quick wins back and the thrill it gives. I want to consistently scale the ladder of personal development and not be knocked off the rungs by my own frustration or the distraction of others. My strength is meant to pull me up further and further to a higher state of being not be wasted on exasperating individuals and hopeless systems. But is this my elephant? To patiently chip away at the ways of old and embrace the trolls along my path? Because who knows, I may need their skill of intimidation a time or two in defense of a cause we both may actually believe in.
While many trolls live below you in dark spaces, let them defend their right to exist. They’ll muddy their own waters just as they spread their filth to you. Walk on your bridge – don’t engage and get pulled down into the water. You just may drown.
How many others before me, before you, have tried to tackle these dysfunctional situations in life and have given up? I know I’d rather face a different challenge than the same one over and over again. It gets boring and discouraging. But who are those that change the world? Those that stick around and chip away everyday for years, sometimes decades.
If you believe in something greater than yourself and know it has the potential to come to fruition don’t let the measly gatekeepers get in your way. Dig a tunnel, take a flight above their heads or just hit them straight between the eyes. Beware of becoming the scapegoat, truth always comes to the surface and what’s hidden in darkness always eventually comes to light.
Whether it’s pressure externally or internally sometimes we just need to be reminded to persevere.
The Inspirational Nurse 