Until fairly recent, I'd been the kind of person to give up whenever things got hard. If a class got too hard in high school, I dropped it. If cleaning my room started to get boring, I stopped. I was able to live my life like this for a while, until all of my unfinished endeavors began to eat away at me. I found myself fixating on the things I never finished rather than what lay ahead of me. It got to a point where it was absolutely intolerable. I sat down one day and wrote in my journal, "STOP GIVING UP." I knew that simply writing this down wouldn't do much for me in the long run, seeing as I'm the kind of person to completely forget about something once a new thing comes along. In order to make sure this message stuck with me, I put it everywhere. I set alarms on my phone for random times throughout the day with the same message, "STOP GIVING UP." I wrote it on my mirror in dry-erase markers. I even made it the lock screen on my phone for a while. The goal was simple: STOP GIVING UP.
I can't fully credit my strategically placed reminders for my revelation. It took more than reinforcement to burn this idea into my stubborn brain. I started to actually practice the act of not giving up. The first time I did this was while I was writing my first piece for Odyssey, AnxietyIs. Although the article was deeply personal and was coming from a place of overwhelming passion, I found myself hitting road blocks every so often. I sat there, staring at my laptop screen, trying to think of the right words to use and the best way to convey my story. The old me would have deleted the entire piece and instead crafted a half-ass article about something I didn't even care about. The new me, however, wasn't going to let that slide. I sat and stared at my screen until a genuinely good idea came to my mind. I didn't go with the first thing to pop up in my brain, I waited until I had something that I was proud of.
After this, I began to challenge myself more. I cleaned my room until it was spotless, rather than stuffing things under my bead and throwing every item of clothing in my hamper, regardless of whether or not it was even dirty. I kept writing for Odyssey, despite the fact that my pieces weren't getting as much attention as they previously had been, and despite the fact that I knew some people didn't enjoy my writing. I wasn't going to sit there and let something so insignificant ruin my passion. I didn't let myself drop writing and move on to the next thing or to the easier thing. I pushed through. Yeah, it sucks when you spend time working hard on an article and having no one read it, but I'm not gonna let that stop me. I still write whatever I want, and hope for the best. If no one reads it or if I get negative feedback, then I know what my audience likes and what they don't.
Not giving up feels a whole lot better than giving up. As silly as it sounds, I feel like I've become stronger. By giving up, I was admitting weakness. Now, I know that I'm capable of doing things, no matter how hard they may be. So, as cheesy as it sounds, don't give up.
