Pursuing challenges and goals despite adversity. Trying
again and again regardless of failures. Pushing forward even when the journey
has been rough. To persevere is an admirable ability. Sometimes called tenacity,
determination is the most prominent trait in gamers as they’re used to
performing the same actions over and over again in order to win. It’s alright
if you run into an obstacle that seems insurmountable; we all have our limits
to what we can do. But giving up at the first sign of a challenge is not good.
I’ve done it myself on many occasions, most often with personal projects. The
reasoning is always about motivation or the work being too hard or even the
payoff isn’t big enough in the end. That may be the potential downside of
growing up with games: you expect near instant gratification with everything.
Some things just take time and you won’t know if it’s truly worth the effort
until you finish it.
Failure hurts about as bad as rejection. The anticipation
and fear of losing really drives you away from attempting anything remotely
difficult. However, taking the easy route is even worse in the long run. Doing
easy and relaxing tasks isn’t bad unto itself, but only focusing on what’s
familiar and comfortable can lead you to remain stagnant. You can’t get better
at anything if you don’t try something new and unfamiliar. For gamers, maybe
it’s certain genres of games that you don’t like. It could be from a past bad
experience or general disinterest. To an artist, maybe certain subjects are
difficult to draw. The first time you draw a tree it seems daunting thinking
about drawing all of those leaves and the textures of the bark, but the task
becomes easier once you try it at least once. After that, every subsequent
attempt is less challenging due to the new experience gained from messing up
before. You drew that tree in three hours. This time, you can do it in two.
Perhaps your next attempt will take less than sixty minutes.
The hardest part about trying any challenge is getting
started. You could have some warm up ritual to prepare yourself for the task,
but that’s procrastination. All I can say is get started right now. The moment
you think of something you want to do, try and do it. The longer you take to start
something, the harder it is to begin at all. If something prevents you from
being able to do this task, what can you do about it? Are there workarounds to
the problem? Can you at least study the nature of the task to understand it
more? Is it an external force or internal?
With
further exploration of the task or ability you want to do, you’ll find out
whether you really want to do it in the first place. Voice acting may sound
like a brilliant idea… until you try it. If reading aloud is scary, voice acting
will be virtually impossible for you. If you start reading out loud to
yourself, that’s a good first step. Sticking to doing just that doesn’t make
you a voice actor, though. You will need to read out loud to bigger audiences.
Take small steps if you must, but don’t quit right away. You must put in enough
effort to earn a chance to rest.
It’s easy to say all of this, yet harder to practice it.
Usually what drives one to be determined is a goal. There’s a puzzle to be
solved and the longer it remains unsolved, the longer you go without making
progress. Once the puzzle is complete, you move on to the next. What if there’s
more on the line? What if the agency is significant? You’ll find the strength to
finish that task. If the reasoning for the task is closer to “I just thought it
would look cool,” there’s a good chance you won’t carry it all the way through.
Take the artist who creates very few, but marvelous, works: they have a great
idea they want to try. During the process of creation, they discover their idea
didn’t turn out as good as they wanted it to. If the idea still seems worth
carrying on, they’ll try again. Otherwise, it’s another discontinued project.
You will face failure. You will face rejection. You will
face obstacles and problems you can never plan for. At times, the world will
seem to be against you and life would be so much easier if all you had to do
was what someone else told you to. It’s easy to be complacent and not try. But
you can be better than that. You can put forth effort. You can shrug off
failures and call it progress and experience. You can adapt your plans to
unforeseen problems.
You
too can be determined.
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