The Art of Keeping Going on

We talk a lot about people who keep going.

We call it resilience, grit, determination.

But maybe those words only describe what we see, rather than what is actually happening.

When I left school, I had two CSEs. A D and an E.

The deputy head told my mum that I’d probably end up working in a factory, eventually realise I hated it, and do something about it.

He wasn’t far wrong.

I went to college. I lasted until late October.

Then I joined the millions of unemployed.

No education of any real value. No particular direction. Pretty lost as a human being.

And, exactly as predicted, I ended up working in a factory.

There were various jobs after that, most of a similar kind. But wherever I went, I carried my past with me.

That feeling of not being good enough was remarkably good at travelling.

Years later, I saw a job I really wanted.

I wasn’t the best person on paper. I didn’t have the qualifications or the obvious background.

But I wouldn’t let go.

Eventually, I got it.

For a long time, I told myself that was tenacity.

Looking back now, I wonder if that only explains how.

It doesn’t necessarily explain why.

Once that question appeared, I started seeing it elsewhere.

A friend recently celebrated finally getting a place in the London Marathon.

It reminded me of someone I worked with years ago who was preparing to run it.

We talked through all the obvious reasons for doing it.

The challenge. The training. The achievement. The experience of running the London Marathon itself.

All true.

But none of them were quite it.

Eventually, another reason appeared.

Someone he loved.

Someone who was no longer here.

Working within what I knew then through NLP and hypnosis, we created an image in his mind of that person waiting for him just beyond the finish line.

I saw him afterwards.

He said something I’ve never forgotten.

“I couldn’t not keep going.”

There was something beyond tiredness. Beyond aching legs. Beyond the distance still left to run.

Something mattered more.

Another friend went through SAS selection.

The whole course is designed to make you stop.

You’re cold. Wet. Tired. Shouted at. Set up to fail. Your feet hurt. Your back hurts. Eventually there probably isn’t a great deal of you that doesn’t hurt.

And then there are the Brecon Beacons.

They have a rather unpleasant habit of hiding what comes next.

You climb. You turn a corner. There’s another climb.

Another corner.

Another climb.

Eventually you see the directing staff ahead.

Thank God.

You’ve made it.

And someone says:

“Just around the corner, mate. Keep going.”

So you do.

You get around the corner.

And there’s nobody there.

Just more hill.

For a moment, everything inside you falls.

The finish line you had allowed yourself to believe in has disappeared.

And that, of course, is part of the point.

They aren’t interested in whether you can walk around a corner.

They want to know what happens when every reason to stop starts to feel perfectly reasonable.

Interestingly, some of those who struggle first can be the people who have always succeeded.

The ones who came first.

The ones who got things right.

The ones who somehow always managed to land on their feet — or occasionally on somebody else’s.

Because this is different.

Sometimes it’s the underdog who has the most strength.

They’ve just never noticed it.

I asked my friend why he had wanted to do selection in the first place.

His answer was simple.

“I just wanted to prove I could do it.”

I’ve thought about that quite a lot.

Prove it to whom?

Perhaps that question sits quietly underneath more of our lives than we realise.

How many entrepreneurs keep building long after they have enough?

How many people chase the next promotion, the next challenge, the next achievement?

How many run marathons, climb mountains, care for others, work ridiculous hours or simply refuse to stop?

And why?

Perhaps sometimes we’re running towards something.

Sometimes we’re running away.

Sometimes we’re trying to prove something.

And sometimes we’ve been doing it for so long that we’ve forgotten there was ever a reason at all.

So perhaps there is something worth noticing in the stories we tell about our own lives.

The jobs we chose.

The relationships we entered.

The risks we took.

The things we walked away from.

The things we refused to walk away from.

The times we fell over.

And the times, for reasons we may not completely understand, we got back up again.

Look across those stories for a moment.

Not at each one individually.

At the sequence.

The pattern.

What keeps appearing?

Why do you do what you do?

What does it give you?

What does it feed?

What are you hoping to find?

What are you trying to prove?

What are you still carrying?

And if — or perhaps when — you find the answer to that question...

How much stronger might that make you in moving forwards?