When is Perseverance Pushing the River?

In the 1970s Barry Stevens authored a book, entitled Don't Push the River.  I read it 25 years ago, when it has a mind resurgence in popularity during the heydey of the 1990s human potential movement.  Quite frankly, I struggled with the book, but the title has persisted as a concept.  If things are supposed to happen, they will; and if they aren't, don't waste your energy trying to push something that doesn't want to happen. In the 90s, when everything seemed to happen easily, maybe the concept was just a sign of the times.

My life has been a challenge for much of this century, and at this New Year, I was shocked to realize how many years have passed since initiating the Millennium.  Many have been the times that I've grappled with whether I was pushing the river, in everything from physical challenges to work situations.

I grew up in the heartland where perseverance and determination were not only virtues, but often survival tactics for our hard winters and summer storms and tornados.  With that said, when I moved to Oregon, I noticed a lot of people who had moved from the Dakotas and Minnesota after a couple of exceptionally challenging weather years.  I render no judgment: they had just decided they could no longer persevere.  (My own move was inspired by wanderlust and the sense of adventure, offered to a flat-lander by the mountains and wild rivers.)

As far as I can tell, I started the process of putting The Game Called Life on Amazon in November of 2013, just days after a government shutdown had provided me with time to contemplate what was important.  Apparently, getting that book to a wider market was part of the answer.  Once we returned to work, the long hours started up again. Occasionally, I worked on formatting, cover design, etc., on a holiday or a weekend, but I am not a detail person, and taking on such tedious tasks when exhausted by my day job was off-putting.  A year later--November 2014--I had a proof.  I sat down one afternoon and hand-marked the edits, entered them into the online text, and then reviewed.  The review revealed more typos which I marked again.  (Long silence follows here until this week.)

I reported earlier this week that it had only taken me 20 minutes to make the changes that had been waiting for attention for 26 months.  Today I jumped in for what I expected would be a few minutes, polishing the final steps in no time.  There is an expression that if you want to make God laugh, tell God your plans. I felt God was laughing at me today. I struggled for hours. Shortly after 5 p.m., my head hung between my hands, and I wondered out loud if the Universe was attempting to tell me to give up.  I thought the message was so important, and I had committed to carry it through. How could iI be asked to quit before it was finished?

Much to my surprise, when I called for help, I actually got a real person who spoke very good English fairly promptly.  "No," she said, "you can't do either of the things you are trying to do to your cover." (Paraphrased.)  Well, no wonder I hadn't been able to do them. I heaved a sigh that connoted both exasperation and relief.  I could give up.

Within another 10 minutes, my submission was complete and has been submitted for review.  Since there is nothing immoral or illegal in it, I am not too concerned.  There is another hoop to get through to get it ready for kindle, but I can't start that until the paper version approval has arrived.

Perseverance has paid off. This time. Yet I do believe there are times when I am being sent a message to just "Give it up already."  That Midwestern upbringing just won't let me let go.  I am not sure how we know.  Last week I wrote about how to tell if our guidance was real or not, and I think the perseverance-versus-the-pushing-the-river conundrum may be another form of guidance confusion.

How do we know?  These efforts in our life don't come with superscripts that say, "Give it up!" or "Hang in there!  Just persevere and this will be rewarded."  There may a way to know when we are in the middle of it.  If so, recognizing the message when I am consumed by the effort is something I have yet to master.  I do know that this evening, I feel light, and my heart feels full. I am not sure, but I am guessing that I wouldn't be feeling that way if I had decided to give it up.

Resilience

A few months ago when the movie was still in the theatres, I saw "All is Lost," starring Robert Redford as a lone aging sailor who's boat is sinking far out at sea.  Throughout the whole movie, we see him struggling, literally attempting to save his life far from any civilization.  I was amazed at his resilience--the ability to bounce back after a set-back.  Over and over again, we'd see him "give up" in exhaustion, literally out of resources and creativity.  Then the next scene would be the next day, and he was at it again, with a fresh idea and a new way to survive whatever dilemma was in front of him at the time.

Today in my mediation time, I kept flashing on his character waking up and attempting something new.  Those meditational snapshots have been on my mind all day. With yet one more snow storm dropping white stuff on Washington, perhaps my snapshots were foretelling the attitude I may need to make it through winter, but I suspect something more than that.  While it feels like I cannot survive one more snow storm, I am sure there is nothing life-threatening at stake for me this evening.

As I reflect on the sailor's resourcefulness, it was only when certain more obvious avenues to survival had proven unsuccessful that he was forced to become more creative.  Right up to the end of the movie, which I won't share lest I ruin the movie for any who haven't yet seen it, when he did something that almost seemed to assure his demise did he actually assure survival.

I think about my many efforts to get Choice Point published over the 17 years since it was "finished." I just gave up about 12 years ago, but I am wondering if I should literally dust off the now out-of-date book and bring more creativity to marketing.  Similarly, The Game Called Life, which I self-published because I didn't want to repeat my experience with Choice Point, has really never gotten off the ground, largely because avenues with which I was familiar for marketing a book with a publisher are closed to self-published works. 

My business, which failed in the dot.com bust, is another challenge wherein I felt at my wit's end in marketing before I finally gave it up completely six years later.  The economics of doing any of these things is more than a little terrifying to me after having my own economic "All is Lost" several years ago.

But the bottom line is that all wasn't lost.  Like the sailor in the sinking boat, I got creative.  I had to move, and I had to shift my expectations about how my work life would play out.  I did it though.  I have a regular income, a benefits package, and even some retirement savings I've been able to squirrel away.  I even bought a home again 15 months ago. While I may not be very happy in my current work, I actually do have choices.  All was far from lost. 

I think something in me is saying I should revisit some of these challenges, think like my life depended on succeeding, and discover how resourceful I could actually be.  That is what resilience is about, stepping back and taking one more run at it when all appears to be lost.  Like the sailor, I may actually need to put my life on the line to save my life.  If I don't try, how will I ever know?  I am reminded of a question I've asked in my books and many coaching sessions: "What would you do if you knew you could not fail?" If I could not fail, why wouldn't I put everything on the line?  Now that is the question.