My original topic for the affirmations for this week was going to be about perseverance. I was going to talk about how we need to keep going when the going gets tough. Remembering why we started this journey in the first place. Finding the joy in the process, contentment in the path, delight in the steps. 

But the more I wrote and the more I thought, the more I realized that it’s not always about persevering. It’s not always about keeping going even when it gets tough. Because, frankly, the science doesn’t really back this up. If we actually go and look at the psychology of working towards our goals and achieving our dreams, we find that sometimes giving up is actually the best thing we can do. Sometimes striving so hard for a goal just leads to more unhappiness. 

Sometimes the best thing we can say is, “No. I’m not doing this anymore.”

And we also have to consider once we achieve the goal, what comes next? If we’re always striving for a goal, when are we ever going to actually be happy where and as we are? 

That’s what I realized that it’s not as much about persevering. It’s not as much about working towards a goal when things get tough. It’s about finding the inner strength to do what you need to do, whether that be to keep going – or to stop where you are and pivot in a new direction. 

Mind you, resilience and perseverance are very much interrelated in my opinion, but I think that resilience means doing the hard things even when there is no goal. Sometimes it’s the drudgery of life is what we have to get through. Sometimes, as I’ve said in other affirmations, shit happens, and we have to withstand it. 

It’s our inner strength, it’s our resilience that enables us to stand tall, to find the joy in the day to day, to find the contentment in the path, to find the delight in the steps. Resilience will take you a lot further, and keep you a lot happier, than continually striving towards a goal post that keeps moving further and further away. 

Resilience will bring you closer to joy than persistence ever will.