Keep It Moving.

It is not a matter of if but of when: “Whatever would go wrong would eventually wrong.” The key to navigating the challenges and vicissitudes of life is to persevere, endure the trying times and keep it moving. In his 1960 Founder’s Day address speech at Spelman College ¹: “Keep Moving from This Mountain,” American minister and activist Martin Luther King Jr. identified four symbolic mountains -relativism, materialism, segregation, and violence- that must be overcome. Martin Luther King Jnr. It implored the audience to persevere and keep moving with faith. He asserted:

Keep moving, for it may well be that the greatest song has not yet been sung, the greatest book has not been written, the highest mountain has not been climbed. This is your challenge! Reach out and grab it and make it a part of your life. Reach up beyond cloud-filled skies of oppression and bring out blazing stars of inspira- tion. The basic thing is to keep moving. Move out of these mountains that impede our progress to this new and noble and marvelous land.

In his memoir, No One Succeeds Alone: Learn Everything You Can from Everyone You Can ², American Entrepreneur and CEO of online real estate company Compass, Inc., Robert Reffkin advised bouncing back with passion when the inevitable challenges of life occur. He observed

For everyone with a dream, there are countless doubters, skeptics, cynics, and competitors. For every impressive victory, there are many more crushing failures and defeats. For every great run of luck, there’s the day when your luck runs out. The truest test of character is not how you act when things are going great—it’s what you do when you hit bottom.

Never stay down. Find the resilience to jump back up and stand even taller than before. Show your grit by continuing to push even when every fiber of your being is telling you to give up, quit, rest. Use your passion to keep dreaming big no matter how many times your dreams are dashed. Resilience, grit, and passion are the difference between an entrepreneur and somebody who had a big idea once.

 Resilience, grit, and passion are the difference between someone who’s living their dreams and someone who’s living with regret. Think about it: when you’re knocked flat on your back, there’s literally nowhere to go but up. You can see with your own two eyes that the sky’s the limit. The only thing left to do is to bounce back with passion by returning to the beginning and dreaming big again.

WE BECOME MORE COMFORTABLE WITH OUR MISSES ³

If you throw a lot of ideas at the wall, some will stick and others won’t. And that’s good. You can’t succeed if you don’t try. And once you realize you’re no worse off for having tried and failed, it gives you confidence to keep trying. Creative people fail, and the best fail often. They’re like children who try an idea before it’s formed, and if it doesn’t work, they move on to the next idea. And they keep moving on until they find one that works. If you want to be more creative, get used to missing the mark.

The Art of the Start ⁴

Maybe you know exactly what it is you dream of being, or maybe you’re paralyzed because you have no idea what your passion is. The truth is, it doesn’t matter. You don’t have to know. You just have to keep moving forward. You just have to keep doing something, seizing the next opportunity, staying open to trying something new. It doesn’t have to fit your vision of the perfect job or the perfect life. Perfect is boring and dreams are not real. Just … do. So you think, “I wish I could travel.” Great. Sell your crappy car, buy a ticket to Bangkok, and go. Right now. I’m serious.

You want to be a writer? A writer is someone who writes every day, so start writing. You don’t have a job? Get one. Any job. Don’t sit at home waiting for the magical opportunity. Who are you? Prince William? No. Get a job. Go to work. Do something until you can do something else.

Every complex idea starts with a single step, a complex computer program starts with a single line of code, a book starts with a single alphabet, a song starts with a single note and so on and so forth.

Meditation

• Daily Calm with Tamara Levitt – Aloneness
• We may feel lonely when we are not involved in a community or miss a friend who has moved away or after a relationship has ended. Loneliness is the desire to connect. When we feel lonely, we crave a real connection; we can be surrounded by people yet still feel lonely if our connection to them does not go beyond the superficial.
• Aloneness – Being with ourselves is a practice. Initially, we may experience unpleasant feelings but being alone is something that we progressively get better at through meditation we build a stronger connection with ourselves.

• Daily Jay with Jay Shetty – Embrace Conflict
• Friction is a helpful force; rubbing our hands together helps us generate heat, and pressing the brakes makes cars slow down. But when it comes to our relationships, we often avoid friction, fearing it would cause damage. It can also be helpful in our relationships.
• Friction can start fire but the flames don’t have to burn the house down instead they can keep you warm.

Podcast

• Airbnb Founder: The Number 1 Thing People Get Wrong About Happiness and Success | Brian Chesky

All the best in your quest to get better. Don’t Settle: Live with Passion.