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Let me tell you about a Swedish woman named Lena Paulsson, who knows all about what’s possible in the face of impossibility. She lost her wedding ring while working in the kitchen in 1995. Sixteen years later, the ring was found in her vegetable garden wrapped around the base of a freshly-harvested carrot. And if you Google “lost wedding ring stories” there are several more just like that one. There’s another remarkable tale that takes place in the UK where Brenda Caunter was missing her wedding band for 41 years before a local treasure hunter found it in her garden where she originally lost it.
These stories would be remarkable enough if it weren’t for the fact that Lena and Brenda never truly gave up on finding their rings. In the intervening time before it was found around the carrot, Lena thought her ring had been lost in the kitchen somewhere. Years after the initial loss of the ring, she had the floor tiles taken up in another round of searching. So you see, even though she let go of the idea of ever finding the ring, she never truly gave up on it. Brenda in the UK had an even longer time to wait, but when she spotted a man treasure hunting for old coins on the local farmlands, she asked him to check the area where her garden used to be. She still had a sliver of hope that it might still be there 41 years after she lost it, and it was.
There’s a big difference between letting go of something and giving up on it. Sometimes you just have to step back and wait for the right time. I say this all the time to my daughter, Lila, who gets her streak of stubbornness from her father. She refuses to give up on a task even when it’s something she’s learning for the first time and is bound to make mistakes along the way. She always wants to skip to the end when she can be an expert. I get it – I was the same way.
I’ll never forget when she was learning how to ride her bike. When we first decided to take the training wheels off, I had methodically coaxed her along a little bit at a time to minimize her frustration with learning how to balance while in motion, letting go of the bike for longer and longer periods, but still running alongside her to prevent a fall. Imagine how stunned I was one day when one of her younger friends was showing off her riding skills, and not one to be outdone, especially by a kindergartener, Lila took it upon herself to grab her bike from the garage, and ride with her friend to show she was equal to the task. She hopped right on and took off with no assistance from anyone. I guess she was ready and no longer needed my help! We both were thrilled.
The problem was that later that same week, she immediately wanted to ride her bike around the scenic pond near our neighborhood as I sometimes do. Never mind that she could barely steer straight on a wide-open, flat cul-de-sac. She was determined to navigate the ups and downs of a narrow walking path no matter what I told her. Well, let me tell you, that was an interesting walk – and I do mean walk – around the pond that day. The bike would flop into the grass, Lila would cry, refusing to walk with the bike up hills, determined to prove herself. That was a frustrating day for both of us.
But I’m sure you could guess what happened later. After weeks of just biking on our street, patiently learning to coast, steer up onto the sidewalks, ride up to the stop sign, and other simple but increasingly complex biking maneuvers, we tried again. Oddly enough, our second attempt wasn’t just around the pond.
On the very same day Lila and I had decided to give the pond path another try, my brother-in-law was in town and wanted to show me the bike path to his mother’s house a mile and a half away, which I had never quite gotten the hang of, and Lila wanted to come with us. We decided to let her try, sure that she was going to have to stop and walk quite a few times on the steeper hills. I even expected a few crashes around the sharp curves.
But you know what? This time she did it! Yes, she did have a hill or two that she had to walk up, but to be honest, those were hills I usually had to push my bike up as well. And she was more than happy to do it as long as everyone else did, too. For the most part, she biked right alongside us all the way to her grandma’s house, only a few months after learning how to ride her bike at all.
How many times have you wanted to skip the practice and discipline of a skill and ended up getting frustrated by failure? Burning a steak when you swear you did it just like on the cooking show or getting stuck trying to learn some new computer software and you’ll be darned if you’re going to read the manual… these are familiar scenarios to us all. You can’t find a lost wedding ring or any other item without looking, but even when your search proves fruitless, you don’t need to give up. You just need to step back and wait for the right time.
Heck, my podcast partner, Dave, and I never gave up on our desire to do a podcast together even though it took us almost seven years to figure it out. When we listened to Jay and Jack’s Lost podcast or Darrell and Clint on The Fringe podcast, who mostly recorded while in the same room together, we were stumped by the logistics of recording in different locations and pretty much assumed it wasn’t possible with our schedules. Not to mention we had no idea how to maintain a blog or submit a podcast to iTunes or anything like that.
But when the time came in 2012 just after the first episode of Continuum had aired, we attacked the problem and began our first podcast, Liber8: a Continuum podcast with Mike & Dave, right when the technology was at a level where we could finally get a grasp on the whole enterprise.
We never truly gave up on the idea, even after years of discussing and dismissing it. We just let go of the problem and waited until the right time when the technology and circumstances lined up just right. It wasn’t just about saying, “Never give up,” and failing over and over; it was about choosing our moment and realizing the idea was still there lurking in the background.
Here’s what I learned.
Whether you’re waiting to gain the necessary skill or just relying on luck to help you out in its own good time, don’t give up. You certainly don’t have to keep banging your head against a wall if you’re not getting anywhere, but letting go of something for awhile doesn’t have to mean you’re finished with it altogether. So somebody else just won the big Powerball jackpot; it doesn’t mean you have to stop buying lottery tickets.
Have hope when all is hopeless! Have determination and patience when trying to meet your goals. If you hold on to an idea even after you’ve let go of immediate success, you’ll likely find your way to a result in the end if you never really fully give up. Whether through perseverance or optimisim, you might just be surprised at what you can accomplish.
I’m Michael Ahr, and this has been stuff I learned yesterday.
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