1. Give up.
2. Acquire and develop the missing character traits in your life.
Here are the four traits, and a short explanation of each.
Here are the four traits, and a short explanation of each.
Courage
- Not just courage to do the right thing, but courage to do the scary thing.
- ... or the uncomfortable thing.
- ... and, especially, the thing you don't want to do.
Ambition
- This is the drive to do something important or meaningful in your life.
- It's not necessarily about fame, or wealth, or power.
- It's the will to do something besides watch TV, surf the web, play games, or read magazines.
- It's the will to do something with the time you've been given, besides waste it in meaningless pursuits.
Initiative
- This is the ability to get up and do something - to start something.
- Ambition by itself may not be enough to motivate you to action.
- To repeat and rephrase: initiative is the power to get up off the couch and get started.
Tenacity
- This is the ability to stick with something until it's completed.
- My friend John W started dozens of home-improvement projects around his house. He never finished a single one. His house always looked half-demolished, as if a truck had crashed into it. He had an abundance of ambition, but a complete absence of tenacity.
- Tenacity is related to perseverance, and also to stubbornness. It's the wolverine on the bear's nose in Vardis Fisher's Mountain Man.
- It's the unwillingness, maybe the inability, to give up.
Notes: I wrote these down on a piece of notepaper and stuck it in my wallet, many years ago. I've been carrying it around since then. It needs to be published - and now it is.
And here's the original, for those of you who want to see it.