Support and Success

There is nothing so difficult as success without support.

In a way success is simple:  do something, do it enough, do it well, and you will succeed.  But that implies commitment and time and resources.  And none of these come easily to the most of us:  we seldom have as much time or resources as we would wish and sometimes commitment can come and go 

Which is where the support comes in - maybe not so much with time or resources (although a good friend or coach or sensei can help us to see how we are spending our time and energy and money and ways we could perfect it) but definitely with commitment.  They will push us when we feel lazy and encourage us when we feel that we cannot go on.  

Can such a thing happen without such support?  On one hand yes, ultimately it is the individual that succeeds or fails - and there have been plenty of examples throughout time of the great and the unknown that have done so.  But knowing the nature of us as people, how many did not make it because that support was not present for them?

More importantly, what do we do when that support is not there for us?

This can be the hardest thing of all, Especially when the support seems to be lacking from the places that we would typically expect it appear. How do we compensate?

For a long time I would curl into a ball and surrender.  After all, if no-one else was interested in it the fact that I was (and not succeeding) was obviously a sign that I should not be doing it either.  But then I learned a valuable and important lesson:  if you cannot get the support from where you might expect it, go and find the support you need.

And so you learn to go and find the support.  It is out there - now (with the advent of the Interweb) more than ever.  And communicating in such an environment has now never been more easy than ever.  The only thing that prevents it from happening is our unwillingness to do so.  

It creates some issues, of course, with the other side of things - the places you expect it and it did not come.  But I have come to understand that it is better to live with that tension and work to succeed than let that tension overwhelm you - and fall into the twilight of those that might have succeeded if they had only had the support that would have assisted them in the midnight hour.