Read This If You Lack Motivation And Persistence To Achieve Your Goals
What Ferrari and Michael Schumacher taught us about persistance
Hi,
It’s my first week back from short holidays on the beautiful island of Krk in Croatia.
Since I’m having a harder time getting back to my work routine and being fully productive - it’s the combination of post-vacation slugishness, the summer heat, ummer fatigue that I mentioned in a recent newsletter, and other factors - I’ve prepared a new installment of my personal insights.
Here’s my latest insight that I’ve learned, I hope you enjoy it and find it inspiring, at least a bit.
"The more you want, wish, and long for something and the longer you patiently wait for it, the bigger and important it will turn out and the more you will appreciate it when you finally get and achieve it."
In our fast-paced world governed by social media and stories of overnight success, we all slip into the vicious cycle of high expectations and instant gratification.
But the reality is that things take time to happen - and the bigger and important the thing is, the longer it will take to happen.
The best and most illusory example of this that come to mind are Ferrari and Michael Schumacher in Formula 1 World Championship.
Michael Schumacher joined Ferrari after the end of the 1995 season. At that time the racing world was convinced that Michael would lead Ferrari to their first championship title after almost 20 years.
But to everyone's surprise, in the 1996 season Schumacher lost the world champion title in the last race.
Things went similarly wrong in the 1997, '98 and '99 seasons where the title narrowly eluded Schumi and Ferrari. After the end of the 1999 season, many, both critics, Ferrars fans, Ferrari team and Michael themselves, began to doubt the Schumacher-Ferrari combo, but at the same time they persisted and did not give up.
What followed was something incredible and made history: Michael Schumacher and Ferrari won 5 consecutive titles, both in Drivers' Championship and in Constructors’ Championship (2000, 2001, 2002, 2003, 2004).
If you’re not a sport fan, then look at the example of chinese bamboo: You plant a seed of a bamboo tree and nothing happens for 5 years. Then after 5 years, something starts moving and suddendly the bamboo tree grows 30m (90ft) in just 6 weeks.
How does this idea apply to burnout, health and wellbeing?
Well, like with most things, the work that we put into our health and the work on ourselves takes time to yield results.
When you start exercising and eating better because you want to feel better and lose 10kg (20lbs), you probably won’t see any major changes and results in the first couple of weeks. But if you keep going, after a couple of months you start to see major changes on your scale, all of a sudden you start noticing that your waist is cut in half and that you feel great and you have double the energy as you did before.
You’ll also appreciate loosing the weight and having better energy more this way because you’ve put in the work and waited a long time for the results to come.
It’s the same with burnout. If you’re stressed out, fatigued or burnt out and you decide to make radical changes in your life, it will take your body some time to recover and to feel better.
You just have to be patient, trust the process and have faith that results are coming even though you don’t see or feel the work that you’ve been puting in and the process of rebuilding your health.
And when you do come out of that stressed out, fatigued or burnt out state, you’ll appreciate being healthy and feeling good very much.
At this point I have to emphasize that this idea and principle apply only if you put in the work, consistently: It’s so obvious but it bears highlighting.
Patiently waiting without any input will leave you disappointed.
It’s the same as with manifesting. What people get wrong about manifesting - whether they want manifest money, success, health, relationship, etc - is that wishing and “manifesting” stuff only in your mind, won’t make you achieve them.
You have to put it in the work, consistent, daily work, be patient, have trust and faith that something is growing without you seeing it and it’s only a matter of time when things will turn out and fall into place.
So the main thing I wanted to leave you with this newsletter is that you never know when things will turn around and work out for you, so you just have to keep going, hang on and wait patiently.
The more you want, wish, and long for something and the longer you patiently wait for it, the more you will appreciate it when you get it and achieve it.
The longer you wait for things to turn around and fall into place, the more likely it is that what happens will be big and important.
That’s it for this short, “motivational“ newsletter, I hope you enjoyed it and found it useful.
Next week’s newsletter is going to be an interesting and insightful one, so if you haven’t yet, subscribe so you don’t miss it.