Taking Pride in Trying

I saw this on Facebook just now: "Don't wait until you've reached your goal to be proud of yourself. Be proud of every step you take toward reaching that goal."

Too often, we base our self-esteem on our accomplishments. We consider ourselves successful as human beings if, and only if, we succeed in what we attempt to do. But often, even just making the attempt is, in itself, an accomplishment, and we should recognise that. Every effort is a little victory, but we almost never celebrate them. Instead, we tend to set goals for ourselves, then think of ourselves as complete failures if we fall short of those goals in any way, forgetting the little successes we have along the way, including the victory of choosing to try.

When it comes down to it, our choices are really the only things we can control. We can choose our actions, but we can never choose the results of our actions. Often, whether we succeed or fail depends largely on factors outside our control. In those cases especially, we should give ourselves credit for trying, whether we succeed or not.

Our success is not ultimately in our hands. There are too many other factors, beyond our own actions, for us to take full credit for any success or full blame for any failure. It's not for us to decide whether we succeed or not, so we shouldn't place the burden of determining our success solely on our shoulders. All we can really do is try. If we try and we succeed, that's great. Good for us. But if we try and we don't succeed, that's okay, too. Good for us for trying. To deepen our inner peace, we would do well to try to learn to accept ourselves and take pride in our efforts, even if our efforts don't become accomplishments. We don't always get to succeed in what we set out to do, so we should give ourselves some credit, even if we can accomplish no more than to try to do the right thing.