I get up when I fall down

I’m a klutz. It’s not a secret, everyone who has ever met me can tell you this. I trip over air. One time, I was in a meeting with one of the head honchos of the company I work for.  I dropped my pen, and without thinking about it, I reached down to pick it up and fell out of my chair! One thing I am proud of, is that I always get up, laugh it off, and keep going.

I like to think that I do the same thing in life. Sometimes it’s harder to get back up than others, sometimes I may need a little bit of help; occasionally, I need to rub my bruised ego a little, but I always get back up.

The past few weeks, I have been feeling pretty battered. As I wallowed in all of the trials and heartaches I have had to deal with in the past year, I was having a really hard time trying to move on. I have reached the place where I just wanted to stop trying. It’s too hard. I can’t do it. It’s not worth it. It hurts too much.  I knew who was whispering in my ear, but I was having a hard time tuning him out.

Today, I read a talk that James E Faust gave a few years ago. In it, he talks about perseverance. He tells the story of when Brother Snow drowned in the Pacific Ocean. It was only through perseverance, that his companions were able to bring him back. He went on to tell the story of Alma Smith, who was shot in the hip at Haun’s Mill, and Brigham Young, bringing the saints across the plains to Salt Lake City. Other stories began running through my head. I remembered all of the adversity that my ancestors faced.

The issues I am dealing with is nothing compared to their trials. Yet they didn’t complain.

President Faust quoted Paul Harvey as saying “Someday I hope to enjoy enough of what the world calls success so that someone will ask me, ‘What’s the secret of it?’ I shall say simply this: ‘I get up when I fall down.”

Time to get back up!





In other thoughts...

This week, I was watching a BYU-I devotional. The speaker was talking about how being an entrepreneur is more about the journey than the destination. How do we measure success? He proposed that it comes down to three questions.

1.       Have I contributed something meaningful?

2.       Am I a good person?

3.       Who did I love, and who loved me?

I really feel strongly that he is correct. Creating a business is not about how much money you make each quarter, it’s not about the cars you drive, the jet in the hanger, or the rock on your finger. It all comes down to those three questions. If you can't answer these questions, you need to get back up, and try again.