• Welcome!
  • Me
    • My Hope
  • My Books
  • Thoughts . .

cherylriesauthor

cherylriesauthor

Tag Archives: Perseverance

Overcoming, Not Status Quo and Easy Breezy . .

20 Saturday Aug 2016

Posted by Cheryl Ries in Attitude, Choices, Confidence, Courage, Discipline, Faith, God, Growing, Lessons, Life, Maturity, Opportunity, Positivity, Self-Esteem, Self-Respect, Strength, Success

≈ Leave a comment

Tags

Maturity, Overcoming, Perseverance, Strength

We aren’t here to live a life free of problems, but rather to motivate, to inspire and to elevate ourselves and others around us through them. We’re meant to rise to the occasion, to learn, to grow and to mature within to be able to take on more problems as well as to develop our abilities to handle greater challenges ahead. How do we do that if we and those we nurture are encouraged to hide from our problems, or worse, kept purposefully from them?? Problems seem to be now viewed as problematic, the very ways in which we challenge our status quo in life now have taken on such a stigma, we often want to escape instead!download

 

 

Facing our problems is the only way we know how strong and tough we can be as the “overcomers” we are meant to be! Hiding, denying, ignoring, backing away, settling for less, or creating safe spaces only cripples us within. We must accept challenges as part of the continuous growing cycle we are always in, we must experience lessons and tests as the ongoing way in which we mature and develop ourselves in life’s perpetual classroom. If we were to live life sans problems, challenges or tests, we would never learn about our own inner strength, our fortitude or most of our abilities. Status quo and easy-breezy doesn’t really teach us about ourselves, nor does it develop within us the appreciation, acknowledgement or awareness of our metal, our own persevering spirit or our maturity as time passes. Overcoming gives us that. When we overcome and mature through things, we develop more self-confidence, self-esteem and self-worth. Of course, all of that is God’s gift to us, through His gift of love within us to begin with. We are meant to be overcomers because God made us to so. In this world, we face daily challenges and must learn to rise to those challenges to become more. There are infinite opportunities each new day for us to become something more and someone greater than who we are today!   Positive-quotes-about-problems-solution-quotes

 

Even if we ourselves created some of the taxing problems we are now enduring through accidental or purposeful choices, we must accept the responsibility we now face for extricating ourselves from the constraints those problems represent. Problems always offer us a chance to be overcomers! And that is always a more inspiring and uplifting response rather than denial or flight. God is with us as we endeavour and pursue the ways to move forward, through and beyond our current issues and problems. But we will not learn how to make our way if we choose to always make our way safer, easier, and problem-free. Accepting problems as the necessary learning experiences they represent is always the best way to keep our peace in this world. Doing otherwise makes our journey more miserable and our role as problem-solver less rewarding.  

Signature02

The Thrill/Agony of Life . .

08 Monday Aug 2016

Posted by Cheryl Ries in Attitude, Choices, Courage, Inspiration, Lessons, Maturity, Patience, Quitting, Second chances, Strength, Success

≈ Leave a comment

Tags

Never Quit, Perseverance, Resilience

Yesterday was truly the “thrill of victory and the agony of defeat” at the Rio Olympics! There was a horrible bicycle crash when the leader in the women’s race went down and laid immobile on the side of the roadway on a very steep, winding and rainy descent. She ended up breaking three vertebrae in the lumbar region of her spine. It almost appeared as though she had died as she lay there motionless, the accident was so horrible to watch! Offset that with the world-record shattering swim of Katie Ledecky and another gold for Michael Phelps, both of the American swim team; or with a 41-year old gymnast still competing in her 7th consecutive Olympics, seemingly defying aging just because she can! 

maxresdefault

If this teaches us anything, it is that daily life mimics the microcosm of the Olympics. One minute, we’re in our rhythm, enjoying the ride and then we’re flat on our backs (literally or figuratively), having experienced something truly random, shocking and devastating. Or we might be working daily towards some truly big goal, not sure if we’ll make the grade and capture the prize for our efforts! Yet, one day, if we commit to something, we surely will make either the goal or the changes in ourselves which occur in our attempt the prize we gain!   

Many-of-the-great

Perseverance, effort, commitment and training our minds, bodies and hearts for success are key. Whether we have a major setback, such as that bicyclist’s fall, or a great success, like Michael Phelps and the American swim team, we need to remember that life’s constant lessons continue as long as we breathe! We shall have great days, bad days, days when the sun shines on us and days when the dark cloud overhead seems eternal. But human beings are resilient, meant for unlimited potential and capable of so much more than we ourselves can even imagine, as long as we don’t give up on life when the going gets tough, or when we have known the agony of defeat!  

Signature02

Cleanup, Maintenance and Restoration . .

30 Tuesday Jun 2015

Posted by Cheryl Ries in Attitude, Choices, Contentment, Discipline, Joy, Maturity

≈ Leave a comment

Tags

Faith, Hope, Joy, Perseverance

A little rain, a lot of rumbling . . after last week’s monsoon, the one last night seemed a wee bit gentler and efficient. It was just progressively darkening skies, which promised rain and finally delivered with thunderous claps; there were no huge dust storms carried in by disturbing wind gusts. No more tree branches came down and not much debris was scattered.  I hope it washed away some of the remaining mess from the last storm last week, which just blew a lot of stuff into new places!  article-2011713-0CE2031700000578-751_964x626

Earlier yesterday afternoon I had warned my friend Joe, while he cleaned my pool, that there were storms hovering nearby. He looked all around the sky for proof, not really all that convinced. In jest he told me that once he cleans all the pools for that particular day in Summertime, during our monsoon season, he goes home and shuts the windows and shades in his house to effectively shut out the fact that a storm might come and eradicate all that day’s hard work out in the heat and humidity! It would have been hard to silence last night’s storms in that way, booming with such resonance! I hope he was successful though. I’m sure that it is frustrating to have cleaned all those pools yesterday, only to have a storm roll through and mess them up anew.  1394793942827

But isn’t that life’s real conundrum for us all in some way . . our real lack of control as mere mortal human beings in setting circumstances and keeping them just as we want them, neatly, tidily and ideally?? Each day we take what comes, giving everything our best for that day in hopeful planning, reaction and response. We must loosen or release our hold and our sense of control on most everything but our emotions; and faithfully, we must learn to wait to see what comes next in life. Rarely do things go entirely as we had planned or envisioned in our minds eye. Clean up, maintenance and restoration is not just left to those who clean pools in Phoenix during monsoon season. It’s just a part of life we must all come to expect and to tolerate! Most of the time, because we can only control what comes from within us . . . we must learn how to adapt, to alter and to amend our plans when life doesn’t play out as we planned. If we want to enjoy our lives overall, we must not let the unexpected and unplanned stuff which happens that is out of our control overwhelm us or impact us for too long. We must resolve ourselves to cleanup, maintenance and restoration each new day.  Signature02

The Seed of Hope Within . .

14 Thursday May 2015

Posted by Cheryl Ries in Attitude, Conquering Fear, Faithfulness, Lessons, Positivity

≈ Leave a comment

Tags

Faith, Hope, Perseverance

If you allow yourself . .  search and find through every struggle, during each test of willful patience and persistence, and in every trial, the counterbalancing measure of hope which can and will develop within if you only let it! We are born that way, we are designed to persist with hope and by faith. If we don’t vanquish our hope for the sake of our weary, worn-down resolve to quit, to give in, to let go, or to harden our hearts and minds.   download (1)

When something is pushing us down, our natural inclination is to push back in self-defense. We’re not naturally inclined to be quitters. Each breath of life and every heartbeat confers that spirit. In each of us is tenacity for the sake of survival, for the sake of developing life wisdom and for the sake of persevering through challenges meant for our betterment. But we all too often let what was an opportunity for growth become an opportunity for fear, doubt and negativity to take root. And in those moments, we design ourselves anew, with fear, doubt, negativity and hardness taking hold!  persistence

Let the seed of hope which is rooted within you be the one which you nurture and feed when the going is tough! If you give hope your faithful attention rather than focusing on feeding your fears, doubts, sense of failure and negativity, you will have a full stockpile of hopeful intentions, thoughts and emotions upon which to call when you need to strengthen your resolve; to push forward and to overcome all the rest of the world! Hope lives within us all as a counterbalance for the rush of life against our living vessel. We are pushed, thrown, plunged and even emerged for what seems eternities in rough seas quite often in life. But it is only when we give way to those forces rather than developing our stick-to-it-ed-ness and willful determination, that we quit on life.  quotes-hope-01-samuel-johnson-600x411

Life is hard, often seemingly it is downright impossible, yet here we all are! Within us is a great strength and willful determination to live, to persist, to thrive and to move forward . . if we just call upon that hope from within rather than fostering what won’t help us in the end! Next time life hands you a challenge, or you are overwhelmed by some set of circumstances, consider the seedling which is pushing back within you for your very own sake. Let hope grow until it breaks through the surface with purposeful intent! Let it fill your mind, heart and spirit with willful and purposeful tenacity, strength and perseverance for the test and whatever lies ahead.   Signature02

Living Takes A Will . .

23 Friday Jan 2015

Posted by Cheryl Ries in Choices, Commitment, Conquering Fear, Courage, Dreams, Faith, Growing, Success, Trials

≈ Leave a comment

Tags

Hope, Perseverance, Persistence

Living takes a will . . one courageous, trusting and hopeful enough to overlook fear, the “what-ifs” and the scrapes of falling in failure. We cannot dare live, with our eyes closed, behind our protective walls and within our safest confines. Living means we face our fears with courage, we endeavor to meet our challenges head on and we keep climbing no matter how many times we slip or fall from this rung or the next. Living isn’t easy, without obstacle; and it surely isn’t done in the safety of our mind’s making. It takes faith, hope, trust, perseverance as well as a surrender to our inability to control every detail and every outcome. But living is worth every scraped knee we endure, each failure, all of our attempts, each broken heart or broken dream. For in getting those, we lived!  images success

No one ever experiences anything worthwhile when merely existing. Push yourself to go beyond today and every day you get by purposefully living rather than merely existing through them. How do we do that and what is the difference? Living means we are already outside of whatever comfort zone we may have set up for ourselves; it means we dare to realize our dreams, to attempt to make our desires reality and it means we don’t give up on ourselves! Living, as opposed to just existing, means that when faced with challenges, we don’t hide, run or flee. We aren’t going to outrun all of our challenges, so the sooner we learn to step up to the plate each one represents, the better. It is life-affirming, confidence-building and esteem-igniting each and every time we take life’s challenges on for the sake of passing the tests and trials each represents to us. If we run, hide, seek to escape or let others do the heavy-lifting in life, we never learn to trust in ourselves, to believe in ourselves or to have faith and hope in our future!  images5Y99UUMF

Just like with our first steps, our first developmental stages through infancy, life never ceases to present to us challenges and learning experiences which we must overcome and pass in order that we may grow and develop into new stages! And each of those new stages brings more of the same by way of tests and trials which we must learn to pass successfully in order that we grow and develop for what lies ahead. Imagine if we had chosen in our toddler years to remain helpless and infantile? No one does that because adulthood represents an promising period which prompts our desire for more. All children seem to want to leapfrog through their development, eager to grow up before their time. Why then do we suddenly find our scraped knees, fears and failures so overwhelming at some advancing age, that we wish to halt our own progress? Keep pushing through challenges, obstacles and all the mess life brings! The only person you really hurt when you let fear, doubt, insecurity or apathy win is you! Make it your goal to live today, with a will, courage, faith and hope. Don’t let life beat you back, down or out.    Signature02

The Recipes of Life . .

21 Friday Nov 2014

Posted by Cheryl Ries in Attitude, Choices, Confidence, Faith, Lessons, Patience, Peace, Quitting

≈ Leave a comment

Tags

Fortitude, Perseverance, tenacity

I am trying a new recipe this morning, and I was starting to get a bit concerned about whether or not it would work. It’s one of those with yeast, which requires a period of activation and rising to do its part. And I hope it will turn out well, but I see a parallel with life in this simple task of hoping in the yeast to do its part. Life for the most part is a series of actions, purposeful and not, which add up to some outcomes and consequences which either seem positive or negative by our appraisal. So life is just a sequence of things we hope for and changes we make when our hopes are dashed. No big deal! 23-09-2013-00-Success-Quotes

 

Why then do we put so much emotional weight on everything we haven’t got a full grasp of control upon anyway?? Do we suppose that we’re better-fated, better-intentioned or just better than others – so that everything should go our way? Even if we’ve prayed and asked God for His favor in something, it doesn’t mean that He will agree that we’re making the right steps, moving in the right direction or are ready for whatever it is we’re looking to find, do or be! Relax; life is about starting some recipes, attempting new things, trying to make something from nothing by mixing intentions, aims and hopes all together. And if at first you don’t succeed, try, try again! Don’t get so discouraged because it wasn’t easy, perfect or natural for you. If you happen to get fortunate with whatever it is you are attempting, then great! But if it doesn’t work after a while and a few go-arounds, perhaps look for a new “recipe” or way to do what it is you wish to!178962_476497912365218_1729959021_n

 

Don’t let the emotional weight of doing, being, making and hoping overwhelm the entire process. Life is all about the trial and error, the endeavoring and the accomplishing, learning and growing in ways you might not yet have even imagined. But don’t give up hope that you’ll either make this recipe or some other way ultimately work. Discouragement doesn’t taste as good as finding the right recipe!

Signature02

 

Rough Seas . .

14 Friday Nov 2014

Posted by Cheryl Ries in Attitude, Choices, Courage, Faith, Peace, Strength

≈ 2 Comments

Tags

Faith, Perseverance, Strength

Life is pushing and pulling a lot of people . . rough seas ahead or already all around!
But rough seas are something in which we’ve all had to surrender, to live, to bide our time and to make our way before. They’re not new, perhaps just the reason for them is new now. It’s a new storm, a new condition, a new time of uncertainty and tenuousness. But we’ve gotten through them before, we must believe in our ability to ride these waves out too!    7aee159e3d-1

 

When life is pushing hard at us, our fears are rising, our troubles seem to be unending and our hopes are at risk of fading, what can we do? I suppose it’s easy to say this, because it’s not always easy to do this – but we can remain in faith, we can rest in God’s assurances and keep our peace regardless. But that’s impossible, you say!! “This is the storm of the century, these waves are too great . . I don’t deserve this . . this cannot be . . I’m already worn out”, and so on . . . etc., etc., etc.  That’s not to diminish how heartbreaking, heart-wrenching or how frightening this storm is! It’s not to impugn our fears, worries and doubts in this event versus others or those of others. It’s not about our expectation of what should be, or about comparing what is happening now to what happened prior, or even about what might yet be. It’s not even the case that we can measure our fear, pain or trauma against anyone else’s! 41Mqz+PSnBL

 

We have to find a way to roll with the big waves as they come, to survive as best as we’re able; and to expect that on another random, new, seemingly sunny day, another of life’s storms will develop. And when that next storm comes, will we be fearless, peaceful, prepared and know exactly what to do?? Probably not. But with the arrival of every one of life’s storms, because of what we’ve already been through, what we’ve already overcome and what we’ve learned about ourselves, we can confidently build our strength, perseverance and survivor muscles for this storm too! Confident that we’ve ridden other storms out and survived those . . our faithfulness in God will bring us assurance that we will see better days ahead with calmer seas, so our peace is much easier to maintain whilst in those storms!

Expect life, like the sea, to change on any given day in any uncertain way. That is the nature of the beast! But give yourself some peace and give God the burden of faithfully guiding you through these rough seas ahead!

Signature02

Meta

  • Register
  • Log in
  • Entries feed
  • Comments feed
  • WordPress.com

Archives

  • February 2021
  • January 2019
  • November 2018
  • July 2018
  • February 2018
  • December 2017
  • October 2017
  • July 2017
  • June 2017
  • May 2017
  • April 2017
  • March 2017
  • August 2016
  • July 2016
  • June 2016
  • May 2016
  • April 2016
  • March 2016
  • February 2016
  • January 2016
  • December 2015
  • November 2015
  • October 2015
  • September 2015
  • August 2015
  • July 2015
  • June 2015
  • May 2015
  • April 2015
  • March 2015
  • February 2015
  • January 2015
  • December 2014
  • November 2014
  • October 2014
  • September 2014
  • August 2014
  • July 2014
  • June 2014
  • May 2014
  • April 2014
  • March 2014
  • January 2014
  • September 2013
  • August 2013
  • July 2013
  • June 2013
  • April 2013
  • March 2013
  • February 2013
  • January 2013
  • December 2012
  • November 2012
  • September 2012
  • October 2010
  • September 2010
Follow cherylriesauthor on WordPress.com

Blog Stats

  • 3,477 hits

Cheryl Ries-Author & Model

Cheryl Ries-Author & Model

Blog at WordPress.com.

Cancel

 
Loading Comments...
Comment
    ×
    Privacy & Cookies: This site uses cookies. By continuing to use this website, you agree to their use.
    To find out more, including how to control cookies, see here: Cookie Policy