How to Keep Up With Life When You Are Tired, Weak and Frustrated

"Don’t give up" is one very easy advice to dish out, but one of the most difficult to give our own selves when we need it. I’ve learned over the years that life is like running a marathon. I’m sure you have heard this a million times already. But the trick in running a marathon is to keep running when you tired, weak and sometimes ‘frustrated’. If you’re currently a few miles into your life marathon and you feel like quitting now will be a better option, join the queue because there are a lot of us. Sometime last year, something happened to me and it made me realise that tired, weak and frustrated are the three wise men that escort us on our to achieving our life goals. So how then do we deal with these issues? How do we keep running with our plan when we feel this way? How do we keep on keeping on when we can’t keep up? I’ll share some key principles that helped me at this crossroad.

“How do we keep on 

keeping on when 

we can’t keep up?”

Conviction.

You just have be convinced. If you’re not convinced about what you are doing, there is no way in God’s earth you can keep running. You have to know what you are running with and be sure of it. You might not know A-Z, that’s okay. But you need to know it’s the alphabet you’re running with, you need to know the language the alphabet is in, you need to know it starts at A and ends at Z. You need to know exactly what you are doing and that you are meant to take this course of action. If you can’t convince yourself of your own plans, trust me there is no way you can convince another person and it absolutely impossible that you reach that nice-looking, white tape on the finish line

Faith.

Have faith. It’s almost all you need. If you are convinced of what it is that you are doing, the next best thing you can have is faith.  Faith, or optimism, or the right attitude, or hoping for the best, whatever you call it in your own words, please have it. You need to believe everything will work out okay. Faith is the evidence of things not seen, the substance of things hoped for. So when everyone sees a few words scribbled on paper, you should see the full manifestation of your plans. You can’t afford to see the same thing people see when they look at your plans. You need to see and own the finished product while the process is on-going. This is not the same as wishful thinking, this is having a clear plan you are sure about, doing all it takes to make it happen and during the entire process seeing no other option but a successful end.

"You can’t afford to see 

the same thing people see

 when they look at your plans"

Hope

Hope ordinarily means a feeling of expectation of something. However, the other definition of hope is a feeling of trust (albeit an archaic definition). This means you trust your plan. This means you do not only have faith in the success of the plan, but you have faith in the plan. You know beyond yourself it is the right thing, and so regardless of the destination, you are sure you took the right road. Thomas Edison hatched a plan to invent the light bulb. He was convinced, he had faith but after thousands of tries and failing, the only thing that kept him going was faith in his plan.

“Let us not feel tired when we are tired 

because that is when we need all the strength 

we can give ourselves”

So let us not feel tired when we are tired because that is when we need all the strength we can give ourselves. Like the popular saying goes, it is the same heat that boils and egg that softens the potato. It all depends on what is inside, is it conviction, faith and hope? Or is it doubt, fear and despair. If it is the latter, then someone needs an internal wardrobe makeover.