When the going is hardest, just keep on keeping on, and you’ll get there sooner than someone who finds the going easy. If you think achieving great heights of success will be easy, you either don’t understand at all how the process works or you have your sights set too low. Reaching the top of any field is difficult, time-consuming, and often tedious. The reason it isn’t crowded at the top is that most people won’t do the things that are necessary to achieve success. They are all too willing to give up when the going gets tough.

I hated every minute of training, but I said, ‘Don’t quit.  Suffer now and live the rest of your life as a champion.

Muhammad Ali          

If you need inspiration to persevere, read the biographies of men and women who have achieved greatness in their lives. You will find that they prevailed because they refused to quit. They continued to toil alone long after the masses had given up and gone home

What do you think of yourself? Really, stop and think for a moment; do you think that you are a good person? Do you appreciate yourself? Have you gotten really good at masquerading to be something you’re not? Well, it’s time to take off the mask and be yourself. Stop letting others define you and define yourself! Self-perception is a very powerful force that can change your whole life. What you think of yourself, you become. Don’t let anyone, ANYONE, define who you are. Only you can do that!

You are always a valuable, worthwhile human being, not because anybody says so, not because you’re successful, not because you make a lot of money, but because you decide to believe it and for no other reason.

At the end of the day, you need to ask yourself, “Am I proud of who I am”?  Am I proud of how I conducted myself and how I handled the difficult situations that may have arisen today?  If you are, than you’re on the right track.  If you’re not, than think about how you may have done things differently and learn from the experience. The beauty of self-perception is that you control it and you can change it if you don’t like it. If you need some help finding yourself, say this over and over:

You is kind. You is smart. You is important.

Define yourself!

Don’t settle!! It’s not in your spirit. Don’t settle for living someone else’s life, or for believing that you should just survive. What you do to live, and what you do to survive are two different things! Choose to live..really live. Playing small is not who you are! You are called to live a GREATER life!! Don’t settle for a place at the back of the line. You are more than able. You are a conqueror. You can come through this, and have your dream. You have COMEBACK power!!! Because…you have something special..you have GREATNESS within you!! Live it!

Unconditional acceptance doesn’t mean that we give up or wave the white flag—that’s quitting. Acceptance means that we let go of who we think we should be and fall in love with who we currently are. The only thing in life you have control over is your perspective. No matter what happens, YOU control what the meaning is, and what to do with the meaning you give to the circumstance.

In our dark times, we have a tendency to focus on all that is bad and wrong in our lives. While this is very easy to do, we shouldn’t do it! I have made myself ill at times like this as I’m sure many of you have also. These are the times when what we need to focus on is all that is good in our lives. I want you to yell and say STOP!

Then tell yourself that this is just a bad moment in time and this too shall pass! Then I want you to remember all that is good in your life. Remember how fortunate that you are and look around you and see how much that you have and appreciate it all. Tell yourself that this moment will NOT define me, but how I react to it will! I will persevere! I will overcome! I will survive! I am better than this!

Remember that your living is determined not so much by what life brings to you as by the attitude you bring to life; not so much by what happens to you as by the way your mind looks at what happens.

It’s not how many times you fall down that counts; it’s how many times you get up! Never give up!

“I’m not telling you it’s going to be easy – I’m telling you it’s going to be worth it.”  ― Art Williams