Nhlalwenhle Ncube
WINNERS never quit and quitters never win. It is so easy for some people to miss their goals because they fail to give it their best and quit in the process. Same applies to relationships and marriages. It is important to have a fighting spirit to pass challenging stages in a relationship and it’s much, much easier to make your marriage work than to give up on it.
Marriage is a sacred contract for a good reason and it is unfortunate that some people think it’s easier to end a marriage than try to save it. Even when you get into a business partnership with someone, you do not expect him to walk away at any moment. You make a contract holding both of you accountable to not letting this happen.
In business, a contract keeps you around and in marriage all it takes is commitment. You commit to work through the problems in sickness and in health. Commitment makes you manage to sail through even in those days when you feel your needs are not being met or worse when you don’t feel the love.
You commit because marriage is more than a contract. It’s a pathway to living up to who you want to be and if you quit you will definitely miss the good times ahead of you. When you endure hard days in your marriage, you grow. Every marriage has potential walk-away moments. In fact, any relationship of depth has those moments, but you must stay focused and give it your best.
I have noticed that most times quitting usually feels like a quick fix, but in the long run, it doesn’t solve the problem. Bear in mind that you leave hoping to meet a “perfect” partner who will make your life better. Unfortu-nately if you are in the habit of giving up, you are likely to repeat the destructive cycle over and over again, missing out on the growth that comes from enduring the hard days.
Growth comes from productive pain! You grow from productive pain. It has a purpose.
Most marriages can be saved except for those ones with ongoing abuse, you need to leave the relationship. Most marriages can be saved and not just saved to survive. They can become partnerships of healing for yourself and others.
There are painful times ahead, but choose productive pain over the unproductive kind. One ends in personal growth, a stronger marriage and a deep connection that lasts. The other ends in agony, divorce and a likely repeat of this vicious cycle.
Commitment is worth it. When things get hard, give it your best and fight to save it, not just to quit and live life wishing if only you had given it your best before quitting. The harder choice would be to push through the obstacles and the challenges. Facts are in, more people will fail at success than succeed. More people will fail at their fitness goals than succeed. More people will fail at their marriages than succeed. More people fail in college than succeed!
The failure rate at anything and everything seems to be higher than the success rate. It comes down to one thing: Those who make it just never quit and those who don’t quit too soon. The truth is that things will always get scary at some point and this tests your commit-ment.
The only way to fail at anything is to quit. This leads me to believe that most people have failed and quit right before their greatest achievement was about to occur. Often, there was just one more step needed. If you aim to achieve some sort of greatness in your life, the task will not be an easy one.
The future seems bright, but because everything in life gets mundane after doing it for so long, once the excitement dies down, the obstacles and challenges start to feel overwhelming.
One thing is true in life and that’s that you cannot control the circumstances, but you can control your response to them. Before you quit, remind yourself what you are quitting to go back to. Remind yourself of the life you didn’t enjoy and the situation that didn’t make you happy.
Remember why you ventured out for greatness in the first place. It may feel good to revisit at first because it’s where you are most comfortable. You won’t have as much pressure, and the challenges may go away temporarily, but once the dust settles and you realise where you are again, the feeling of not being satisfied will rise again. You will be unhappy again, except this time, you will be ridden with guilt and disappointment because you failed your attempt. The more times you let yourself quit on your goals, the harder it becomes to continue chasing them.
Pain is temporary. It may last for a minute, or an hour or a day, or even a year. But eventually, it will subside. And something else will take its place. If you quit, however, it will last forever. Reminding yourself what you will be going back to is sometimes enough to push you to move forward.
Remind yourself that most people would quit.
Doing what most people do will only grant you what most people have. If you want different results than what most people get, you need to be willing to do what most people won’t. Not quitting is one of those things.
When times get tough, most people choose to quit. If it’s an easy choice to make, then it’s probably the wrong choice. In life, you constantly face two choices when opposition comes your way — the easy choice or the right choice. If most people are busy making the easy choice, challenge and push yourself to make the right choice.
Remind yourself that the bigger the challenge, the bigger the reward. No matter where you are in life, if you are looking to achieve something great, how far up you need to climb determines the magnitude of the challenges you will encounter.
Most people look at challenges and become discouraged without realising that a challenge is an invitation to the next level of success in your life. A challenge is simply a mindset you aren’t used to acknowledging. That’s why they feel so uncomfortable at times. Finding the right solutions and getting the right perspective doesn’t change the challenge; it changes the person pursuing it.
You can complain because rose bushes have thorns or rejoice because thorn bushes have roses. It all comes down to a matter of perspective.
If you are being challenged, it’s not the end of the world, it’s the beginning of a new one.
Understand that marriage needs hard work and it’s not for quitters. It’s not just a bed of roses, but there are difficult stages which will test your love and commitment. When you endure hard days in your marriage, you grow. Every marriage has potential walk-away moments. In fact, any relationship of depth has those moments, but you must stay focused and give it your best.
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