No Matter What You Do...

​Sometimes, it doesn't matter what you do, you're not going to win the particular game you're in. Or the battle. Or the prize. But what's important, no, what's vital, is that the loss doesn't  dim your vision, cripple your momentum, or undermine your confidence, courage or integrity.

Keep your confidence, nourish your courage, and hold your integrity.

There are a million times when you can overcome problems, challenges, setbacks. What usually, not always, sets us back, knocks us off stride, sends us into a spin, isn't so much the circumstance we face, but how we allow ourselves react to it.

If we're in a frame of mind to contend, we can be a huge help to ourselves. The first line of defence, and thereby the first line of attack, is sufficiency. In this case, it's self-sufficiency. It means that though the 'plane is about to crash-land into the Atlantic, we've got our oxygen on, we're braced and ready, we're in survival mode. 

Got that? We're giving ourselves a fighting chance. Not too many instances in life can relate to the immediacy of a 'plane crash, but the need for mental readiness, the choice to use whatever means are available to us,  are our most friendly and useful options. 

And that's why it's necessary to remember that when the chips are down, we're facing a bleak prospect, and there doesn't seem to be too much outside encouragement around, that we can decide, yes, we can decide, how we're going to let ourselves feel about it.

What's the use of that?

Here's the use of it; when we decide to not feel overwhelmed, when we decide that we're not going to let some outside circumstance, or unhelpful person, determine how we feel about a situation, we instantly take back our personal freedom. That then, is what integrity is about, being true to ourselves. And when we hold our poise, don't allow ourselves to get thrown off stride, we dismiss the physical discomforts of tension, anxiety, stress; the single greatest source of confusion and disablement.

Wasn't that the shining example of Mandela? Love him or loathe him, he stuck to his beliefs, his driving force, his integrity; if ever a man was true to himself, there's one.

And he had a great strategy. Day in, day out, in the maelstrom of attempted humiliation, beatings, mental torture, he reinforced himself with the stanzas written by WE Henley:

"In the dark of night that covers me,
Black as the pit from pole to pole,
I thank whatever Gods that be,
For my unconquerable soul".
That was what directed his thinking.
Have a Great Day and Do Well..