| My favourite description of the word faith is; trusting in advance that which only makes sense in reverse. In other words, you don’t need to know how to get somewhere, or achieve something, you just have to get started and then the path will open itself up to you. I have experienced this time and time again in my life. The only thing you do need to realise is that, between where you start and where you want to be, faith alone is not enough. You will also need to move, work, persist and overcome. I know that’s probably not what you want to hear, but faith without fortitude will leave you flailing. |
Make no mistake about it – I have said so many times it’s boring and worn-out – your success and happiness in life is not about luck, talent, intellect, money, experience, knowledge or most of the things you may think it is. It’s about faith with fortitude. You must have both parts. Faith without fortitude will leave you feeling calm, but with nothing. Fortitude without faith will lead you around in circles. I want to share an exciting achievement I experienced recently, and, as I thought about how it happened, the words that came into my heads were; faith and fortitude.
Sometimes I’m a little resistant to share things I’ve achieved because I don’t want you to think I’m doing it to impress you. I truly am telling you this because I know you can do the same in your life, no matter who you are or what your circumstances may be. I want this to inspire and encourage you to use faith with fortitude in your own life. In the Cambridge dictionary, the definition of fortitude is; courage over a long period. I would correlate it with persistence and perseverance, but I wanted a word starting with ‘F’!
I am very passionate right now about my purpose of creating a wave of wellness around the world and helping people live a life of joyful longevity. I am confident about my message and I have total faith that it will change lives. On a daily basis, I contact leaders in organisations, on LinkedIn, to try and get into their organisation to share my message and engage the un-engageable to taking positive steps towards living the life of joyful longevity. I send messages, I send emails and I follow up with phone calls until; I either get told to stop calling or I get booked to speak for their company. I truly have faith that if I keep going, I will get the result I want.
Well, I received a message last week from Nicole, the HR Director at a company that I had been contacting since January this year. You can read if for yourself, so you know I didn’t just send her one message and hope for the best. This message arrived on December 5th and on December 13th I spoke to 100 people at an off-site conference in the Legends Room at the Melbourne Cricket Ground.
Dance until it Rains!
I wrote a book called Dance Until It Rains, about my amazing and inspiring mother, her life and her courageous journey with cancer. She had fortitude like no other person I know. She outlived her predicted diagnosis by 15 years and impacted, and is still impacting, many lives along the way. The title of the book came to me after hearing the story of the Red Indians and their ability to dance and make rain. The truth is that the rain comes, not because of; the dance moves, the whooping and singing or the magic they claim to have. When looking for the answer, the chiefs of very dry tribes found the tribe that was making it rain and asked, ‘What’s the secret?’ With that, the chief of this tribe answered, ‘There is no secret, we just dance until it rains.’ In other words, the answer is faith with fortitude. They knew it would eventually rain, if they just kept dancing!
This is a screen shot I took from the tracking I did on an excel spreadsheet as I relentlessly followed up with Nicole. I do this for every person I am following up. My theory is; I will keep going, with faith, until I either get told to stop calling, or, I get a job. As you can see, this interaction all started back on January 27, 2019. There were several messages left from January to April, and then a flash of activity and hope in April and May. For the next seven months, I got no response from her, with the exception of one message on May 14. I’m not sure what kept me making call after call, when I was getting no response. All I had was faith that if I kept going then I would get the result. Well, it happened as I was walking my dog in the afternoon of December 5, when the text message came through. Then, one week later, on December 13, I spoke at their event. Nicole loved it and said they will definitely be using me again. The secret; faith with fortitude. I get told by people all the time how lucky I am. I believe I am blessed, but not lucky. The things I achieve are not because of luck, talent or intellect, they happen because I combine faith and fortitude with everything I do.
I’m telling you about this exciting experience in my life, not to impress you, but, because I want you to be encouraged by it. I didn’t get the speaking job because I am an unbelievable speaker. I believe I am a good speaker, but they had never heard me speak before. I got it for one reason and one reason only; persistence. In fact, Nicole explained to me that, as they were putting together the program for this day, and she thought about who she could get to fill that speaking spot, my name just instantly came into her head. Why? Because she had heard my phone messages so regularly for so long!
It’s always too early to give up. In fact, there is only one certain way to fail, and that is to give up trying. It was faith with fortitude that helped Colonel Sanders overcome 1009 rejections to find someone who would buy his recipe for fried chicken. It was faith with fortitude that is the reason you have ever heard of JK Rowling and Harry Potter, after more than forty rejections from publishers. It will be faith with fortitude that helps you achieve the things in your life that many people will consider as luck, but you will know better. So please, take this message to your heart, and believe without a shadow of a doubt, that your success in life is inevitable when you combine faith with fortitude.