ACCESS NL > Features > Why you should not quit: The art of not giving up
Why you should not quit: The art of not giving up
2020-03-22 | By Katarina Gaborova
Imagine yourself sitting in a front row of your favourite cinema. The movie captivates your attention with a full spectrum of human emotions. As it unfolds, the story shows the main character facing many obstacles, but never giving up.
A different turn
In this movie Suzy is the main character. She is a young and successful business woman–powerful and inspiring, who thought she had experienced everything when she learned she was expecting her first baby. Suzy was excited and could not wait to meet her baby girl, and her pregnancy went well. Until the day she gave birth.
Suzy’s dreams took a very different turn when the doctors discovered her daughter’s liver was failing. So instead of focusing on bonding with her new daughter, there were invasive assessments, treatments and eventually, to save the baby’s life, a liver transplant. All this required months in the hospital and a series of operations. Suzy needed to find a way to cope.
Not giving up
While we feel Suzy’s anguish, fear, desperation and hope for her daughter, she is also an inspiration. Suzy was used to having control and planned her life perfectly, but this new situation was different, nothing up to now had been this hard. But, as giving up was not an option what could she do?
So while focusing on her beautiful daughter and making her as comfortable as possible, Suzy spent all her free time researching liver transplants and recovery. Suzy used her free moments for study and improvement.
New energy
Acquiring new knowledge helped get Suzy through these toughest of times–she noticed it gave her mind a break from the stressful situation, filled her body with a fresh energy and gave her a sense of control over at least some areas of her life. Researching and learning supported her through the months of waiting patiently for the hospital staff treating her precious daughter.
This is a true story. Suzy wants to pass on that helping others, taking steps forward, having some control, seeing positive moments, and stimulation of her, then, overly-busy mind really helped during those hardships, battles and sorrows.
Happy ending
Personally I love movies that end happily. Luckily so does this one! Today Suzy’s beautiful little girl is an active three-year-old, thanks to a liver donated by her father.
Suzy built a new career all over again–one that allows her to be close to her daughter and combine the knowledge she learned in the hospital. While those experiences were tough they made her wiser, more grateful, more powerful, a believer, and a survivor.
Steve Jobs, co-founder of Apple, said in 2005, “You can’t connect the dots looking forward; you can only connect them looking backwards. So you have to trust that the dots will somehow connect in your future. You have to trust in something—your gut, destiny, life, karma, whatever. Because believing that the dots will connect down the road, will give you the confidence to follow your heart even when it leads you off the well-worn path and that is what will make all the difference.” For Suzy trusting in her newly-acquired knowledge helped her get through those toughest of times.
Inner superhero
We may not be aware of our capabilities until we are forced right to the edge, to the point where we have no other choice. This is where our inner superhero takes over. Human bodies are amazingly designed, evolution has given us physiological inner strengths and physiological systems hard-wired to enhance our chance of survival by being vigilant and responsive to threats. Our survival intelligence has embedded higher level meta-cognitive systems within our nervous system that help to calculate the situation, be cunning in our surroundings, or even interpret and understand others’ actions, behaviours, and desires. Based on this information we respond accordingly.
Get through this
Life brings downward spirals, but it is comforting to know that we were designed to get through them. I share this story with Suzy’s permission to show positive surprises can come at the hardest moments, that things can change–we can get through this–if we trust the future. We may stumble but not give up. That is the difference.
If you are in the need for support in your ‘mental well-being’, ACCESS can provide help through a referral within its Counselling Service Network. You can also contact an on call Counsellor either by phone, or by clicking here to fill out a form which will be sent directly to the on call counsellors.
About the author
Katarina Gaborova is a founder of K.G.Psychological Services (psychologistinthehague.com, katarinagaborova.com) in The Hague, where she works as a psychologist and coach and is a member of the ACCESS Counselling Service Network (CSN). She is a TED speaker and a published author of SEE BEE TEE products amazon.com/See-Bee-Tee-Reinforce-Positive/dp/1790721326.
