{"id":2092,"date":"2019-01-23T19:52:15","date_gmt":"2019-01-23T19:52:15","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/westernmirror.com\/?p=2092"},"modified":"2019-01-23T19:52:19","modified_gmt":"2019-01-23T19:52:19","slug":"dear-dreamer-persistence-beats-bad-timing","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/westernmirror.com\/?p=2092","title":{"rendered":"Dear Dreamer, Persistence beats Bad Timing"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><em>Michael Nattoo<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">J<strong>ack and\nRose meeting on the Titanic (fictional), Romeo and Juliet falling in love\n(fictional), and Gully Bop and Miss Chin (pre-split) &#8211; all shining examples of\nthe love we all yearn for. But aside from that obvious detail, what other\ncommon thread runs through these stories? If you guessed \u2018bad timing\u2019, then\nyou, my friend, are right. They all had chemistry, but timing proved to be a b\u2026\nbad thing. Yes, timing proved the Achilles heel in those \u2018exemplary\u2019 love\nstories. The Titanic crashed days after Jack and Rose hit it off, Romeo and\nJuliet lived in a time when their families were yet to find peace with each\nother (if we\u2019re counting that as the only issue they had) and Gully Bop and\nMiss Chin\u2026 well\u2026 they were Gully Bop and Miss Chin much too soon. Point is:\nTiming is EVERYTHING. Yes, I tried avoiding the use of that clich\u00e9 to get my\npoint across but it\u2019s the only one that seems fitting for the matter <em>at hand<\/em>\n&#8211; see what I did there? <em>\u2018At hand\u2019<\/em>?&nbsp;\nBecause we\u2019re talking about time and\u2026 Sorry. <\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Now, I\u2019m\nsure for most of you, my aforementioned arguments, if I may generously call\nthem that, are stating the obvious: \u201cMichael, of course it\u2019s bad timing. Duh\u201d,\nyou say. And to that I say, Dear Dreamer, you are right. I <em>am<\/em> stating\nthe obvious, but there is a reason to my madness. You see, recognizing and\nacknowledging that many of the ills we face stem from that abstract \u2018bad\ntiming\u2019 thing, is the start of overcoming it. It was Sun Tzu who once said: \u201cIf\nyou know the enemy and know yourself, you need not fear the result of a hundred\nbattles. If you know yourself but not the enemy, for every victory gained you\nwill also suffer a defeat. If you know neither the enemy nor yourself, you will\nsuccumb in every battle.\u201d <\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">See, I told\nyou I was getting somewhere with this. Not only am I in the business of stating\nthe obvious, you see, but I can intersperse my madness with some \u2018good advice\u2019,\nlike so: knowing (acknowledging) your foe (bad timing) makes it much easier to\nfocus on defeating it. The trick is, however, you can only overcome (defeat)\nbad timing with one thing: optimistic persistence. Sure, you could throw\n\u2018planning\u2019 into the mix, but what happens when, not if, your plans get\nderailed? The way I see it, \u2018planning\u2019 is just a way to optimize your\npersistence. If you fail, you try, and you try and you try again. That\u2019s\npersistence, Dear Dreamer, and that\u2019s you chipping away at the effects of bad\ntiming.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Take a\nmoment to remember your \u2018Almosts\u2019: the \u201calmost lover\u201d, the \u201calmost friend\u201d or\nthe \u201calmost <em>whatever-good-thing-you-could\u2019ve-gotten-but-didn\u2019t<\/em>.\u201d I\u2019m\nserious. Stop reading right now, and reflect. Keep reflecting. Done? Good. If I\nhad allowed you, perhaps you could have recalled a few more of those experiences\ntoo, where everything seemed almost JUST perfect, but wasn\u2019t quite right, and\ntherefore fragile. That \u2018not quite right\u2019 is the chink that makes your armor a\npaper shirt in a war of scissors. Quite the dynamic, huh?<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">There are\nmany things we won\u2019t accomplish in our lifetimes, but we get to choose what\nthose things are. I hate to sound like that annoying guy who believes every\nsingle thing can be made possible if we persist at it, but there is some merit\nto that. Persistence is about focus. It\u2019s about exhausting the odds. We almost\nnever get anything when we\u2019re quite ready for it. This means that more often\nthan not, we\u2019re faced with the issue of having something good, at a really bad\ntime. That\u2019s often incentive enough for us to jump ship. But if we persist, if\nwe try long and hard enough, it\u2019ll come. Pause. What I\u2019m saying is, if you keep\nswinging, you are bound to hit something. It\u2019s a shot in the dark, yes, but it\nbeats the alternative of running away.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Companies\nlike Microsoft, Apple, Samsung, and even Sony, were ahead of their time, and\ninevitably, they failed when they first tried. That\u2019s not because they weren\u2019t\ngood ideas, but because they just couldn\u2019t flourish that time. Unless you have\nyour very own personal seer, your only option is to keep swinging. Nobody cares\nhow great your ideas are, or how great your plans are, or even how great you\nare. The truth is, people are more inclined to celebrating mediocrity, just so\nlong as it is consistent, and persistent.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">So, be\npersistent, keep swinging. It has to connect one day. And that, Dear Dreamer,\nis a scientific fact\u2026 probably. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Michael Nattoo Jack and Rose meeting on the Titanic (fictional), Romeo and Juliet falling in love (fictional), and Gully Bop and Miss Chin (pre-split) &#8211; all shining examples of the love we all yearn for. But aside from that obvious detail, what other common thread runs through these stories? If you guessed \u2018bad timing\u2019, then [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":2093,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7,10],"tags":[1090,1040,1085,1086,1088,1091,1089,1084,1087],"class_list":["post-2092","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-editorial","category-letters","tag-bad-timing","tag-dear-dreamer","tag-exemplary-love","tag-gully-bop","tag-jack-and-rose","tag-persistence","tag-timing","tag-timing-is-everything","tag-titanic"],"amp_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/westernmirror.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2092","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/westernmirror.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/westernmirror.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/westernmirror.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/westernmirror.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=2092"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/westernmirror.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2092\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2094,"href":"https:\/\/westernmirror.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2092\/revisions\/2094"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/westernmirror.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/2093"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/westernmirror.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=2092"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/westernmirror.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=2092"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/westernmirror.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=2092"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}