What is determination?

Today I'm going to talk about a view of determination. I think most people think that determination means that you are tough enough to carry on pretty much no matter what. Whilst this might be the case human beings are innately insecure and never as tough as they think they are and rarely are other people as tough as we perceive them to be! The jazz legends Miles Davis and Herbie Hancock said something along the lines of; when you play a bad note, just play the next one. A bad note is not a wrong note if you just play it like it is just a change in direction and very few will notice and even less think it is not deliberate, especially when you make it go right after the mistake. If we think of determination as just taking the next step forward, playing another note with an attitude of confidence and optimism that the step after that will be right then toughness does not come into the equation. The ability to take mistakes in our stride is where the toughness lies, being brave enough to make mistakes and carry on regardless believing it will all turn out well as long as we keep working at finding the right way. If we just keep taking a step forward at a time things change and at some point, the law of averages says they will change in a positive direction. If ultimately, we believe that then we can always take a step because that becomes one step closer to a better place. Even when things seem impossible, then these tough moments can possibly become the best story and most powerful story of our lives because it could be the moment when we realise who we are and what we need to do to become who we want to be. We are who we think we are, and this can and will evolve especially if we work at designing how we feel. Life is so complex and the brain infinitely challenging to understand that even when we have great awareness and have worked to manage our emotions there will always be situations that overwhelm us or throw us off stride but I contend that if we have worked at our responses and shown emotional strength and managed to keep calm and take next steps even when we are out of our depth this template will allow us to recover faster and figure out how and what next step we can take, even if it is a bad note, it is still moving the song forward to better notes. As always my reason for doing the podcast is you the listener so please connect and give me feedback as that is how I can evolve the podcast. I appreciate you choosing to listen because your time can be spent anywhere and that you choose to spend a few minutes with me is so cool and inspiring.