Ep 185: Tenacity - The Art of Not Giving Up

How often are you so close to the thing you’ve been working toward—the breakthrough, the answer, the “yes”—and you give up just before it arrives? I’ve watched brilliant women get right to the edge of something life-changing and turn around because it got uncomfortable, took longer than expected, or they couldn’t see what was on the other side.

In this episode, I’m talking about tenacity and what it actually looks like in real life. The version of you you’re becoming can feel far away, especially when you’ve been on this journey for a while. And that voice telling you to give up? It’s not wisdom. It’s fear in a trench coat pretending to be wisdom.

Tenacity touches every area of your life. So if you’ve been working and waiting, and you’re starting to wonder if it’s worth it, I want to invite you to stay just a little bit longer. Because you might be closer than you think.

Click HERE to read the full show notes.

Transcript

Hey, this is Melissa Parsons, and you are listening to the Your Favorite You Podcast. I'm a certified life coach with an advanced certification in deep dive coaching. The purpose of this podcast is to help brilliant women like you with beautiful brains create the life you've been dreaming of with intentions. My goal is to help you find your favorite version of you by teaching you how to treat yourself as your own best friend.

If this sounds incredible to you and you want practical tips on changing up how you treat yourself, then you're in the right place. Just so you know, I'm a huge fan of using all of the words available to me in the English language, so please proceed with caution if young ears are around.

Well, hello again, my beautiful humans. Welcome back to Your Favorite You. 

I'm so glad you're here. Okay, I need to tell you a story about the most unglamorous act of perseverance I have committed in recent memory. It involves old music, the Oscars, a shower, a nap, and Southwest Airlines. 

Stay with me. So I am traveling here in the near future, some for work and some for pleasure, because as you know, your girl does both. And I wanted to sign up for the new touchless ID. I was able to sign up very easily on Delta and United and American, a couple of clicks in each of the apps, and I was good to go because I have already all the things that make it easy for me to travel. 

So this was an administrative task. It was boring. It's the kind of task that might live on your to-do list for weeks because it doesn't feel urgent enough to actually do until suddenly it is. And I went online to fix my Southwest Rapid Rewards account. 

I couldn't fix it online. So I had to call. And I'm a Gen Xer. I don't mind calling and talking to an actual human. It's actually my favorite thing to do. So I call and I wait and I wait and I wait two hours, 30 minutes. 

So I want you to picture what two and a half hours on hold actually looks like in my real life, because it's not glamorous. While I was on hold, I watched the Oscars. I took a shower. I brought my phone into the shower, put it on speakerphone in an area that would not get soaked. 

And I was committed to this. I played approximately 110,000 rounds of solitaire on my phone. I practiced my upcoming TEDx talk, which by the way, is coming along great, but more on that next week. And then you guys, I took a nap. 

I fell asleep. It was an unintentional nap. I fell asleep with my earbuds in, counting on the sound of a human voice to wake me up like some type of customer service alarm clock. It was well after midnight. 

I woke up. I looked at my phone. I thought, okay, that's it. I've done everything humanly possible. I've been patient. I've waited. This is not the hill I want to die on. I took my earbuds out and was about to hit end call. 

And then I heard a voice, a real live human, warm, kind voice. And the gentleman on the other line was so kind. He was so pleasant. He fixed my problem in, are you ready for this? About two minutes. After two hours and 30 minutes on hold, two minutes and it was done. 

And as I hung up, probably looking like a sleep-deprived raccoon at midnight with my earbuds hanging on by a thread, I thought, what if I had hung up? The question sat with me, what if I had hung up? 

The answer, practically speaking, is that, of course, I would have had to call back the next morning, wait again, probably longer. And somewhere in the middle of that, I might have just decided it wasn't worth it and skipped the whole thing. 

But here's what actually kept me up after I finally got off the phone. And not just because it was midnight and I had just had a 20-minute power nap. How often do we do this? How often are we so close to the thing that we're working toward? 

The breakthrough, the answer, the yes, the shift. And we give up just before it arrives. I think about this with my clients all the time. Not in a pushy way. It's because I've watched brilliant women walk right up to the edge of something life-changing and turn around because it got a little bit uncomfortable, maybe even a lot uncomfortable, because it was taking longer than they thought, because they couldn't see what was on the other side. 

The thing about being tenacious is that it asks you to keep going without proof. Southwest was not sending me progress updates. There was no little status update that said, you're number four in the queue. 

You're number three in the queue. There was hold music and hope. That's it. And isn't that just life? Isn't that what it actually looks like when you're in the middle of something that matters? You don't get a progress bar when you're healing a relationship. 

You don't get a notification when your business is about to turn a corner. You don't get a text that says, hang on there. The breakthrough is just 12 minutes away. You just have to keep going. And most people don't. 

Not because they're weak, not because they don't care, but because the not knowing is exhausting. And at some point, maybe I should just start all over feels like the smarter, saner, more efficient choice. 

But what if it's not? I want to get a little poignant with you for a second because I think there's something underneath this that we don't talk about enough. Giving up right before the breakthrough isn't just about impatience. 

It might be about what we believe we deserve. Stay with me here. When we're waiting, whether it's on hold with an airline or in the waiting period of our own growth, there is a voice that can creep in, and that voice might say things like, this isn't working. 

Other people have an easier time with this than I do. Maybe this just isn't meant for me. I've already waited so long. If it were going to happen, it would have already happened by now. Does this sound familiar? 

Because of course, I'm not talking about phone calls anymore. I'm talking about the marriage you're working on, and it's hard, and you start wondering if you're just delaying the inevitable. I'm talking about the career pivot you've been slowly making, and it's taking three times longer than you thought. 

And you're wondering if maybe you misread the signs. I'm talking about the version of yourself you're trying to become, the calmer one, or the braver one, or the woman who finally feels like herself. 

And some days she feels so far away. That voice that says, give up, is not wisdom. It's fear in a trench coat pretending to be wisdom. Here's what I know about the women I work with. And here's what I suspect is true about you. 

You've been through things that required real, actual, bone-deep tenaciousness. You've waited for things that mattered. You have kept going when it wasn't comfortable. You have done it before, but you just forgot. 

So I'm here to remind you, the gentleman at Southwest, he was there the whole time. He was always going to pick up right when he picked up. The problem was always going to get fixed in two minutes. None of that changed because I got tired of waiting. 

None of it was contingent on how I felt about waiting. That thing you're working toward, it doesn't care how tired you are of waiting either. It's still there. The question is only whether you'll be there when it arrives. 

Now, I want to be clear. I'm not telling you to white knuckle your way through everything forever. There's a difference between tenacity and stubbornness. There's a difference between staying in something because you believe in it and staying in something because you're afraid to admit it's not working. 

Tenacity is purposeful. It's not, "I refuse to quit." It's "I'm not quitting because I know what I'm working toward and I trust the process," even when the process is annoying as hell. Stubbornness is the thing that keeps you on hold with an airline that has definitely disconnected the call. 

Different thing. Know the difference. And listen, if you had hung up on Southwest and called back the next day, that would have been fine. That's not failure. That's just logistics. We're not throwing our entire lives away over a phone call people. 

But the dream, the growth, the relationship, your favorite you that you're actively trying to become, don't hang up on that. Don't hang up on that 10 seconds before the human picks up. Here's what I want to invite you to sit with this week. 

Where in your life are you hovering over the end call button? Not rhetorically, actually think about it. Where have you been patient and tried and waited and worked and you're starting to wonder if it's worth it? 

Where is the exhaustion starting to sound like logic? That's where I want you to lean in. Not harder, just a little bit longer, just at the teeniest bit longer. And if you're finding that you need some help figuring out which things actually deserve tenaciousness and which things you should genuinely let go of, of course, that's exactly the kind of work I do with my clients. 

That discernment is a skill. You don't have to figure it out alone. You can find me on Instagram @coachmelissaparsonsmd. You can find me at melissa@melissaparsonscoaching.com. Thank you so much for being here today. 

If this episode hit home for you, share it with another woman in your life who might need to hear it. And if you've been thinking about working with me, don't wait two and a half hours. The whole time on my end is much more reasonable. 

Okay, my friends, I'll see you next time.

Before you go, I want to tell you about something special that I'm doing that I know you're going to love. On Thursday, April 30th at 7 p.m. Eastern, I am going to be hosting a free workshop called Why Smart Women Stay Stuck and the One Shift That Sets You Free. 

If you've been listening to this podcast, you know that I work with amazing, accomplished women who have achieved everything that they thought they wanted, but are still feeling stuck in one way or another. 

This workshop is for you if you're tired of overthinking every decision, if you're exhausted from seeking everyone else's approval, or if you know you're capable of more, but you don't even know what the hell more even looks like. 

I'm going to share the one shift that changes everything, which is how to move from external authority to your own internal authority. And I'll tell you, of course, exactly what that looks like and how to make it happen in your own life. 

Here's what makes this even better. Just for signing up for the workshop, you'll be getting a 25 question assessment called, Am I Giving My Power Away? This assessment helps you identify exactly where you've been handing your authority over to others. 

And if you show up live and engage with me during the workshop, you'll be getting two additional bonuses. My permission slips for smart women, which is a collection of 10 beautifully written permission slips that you can save to your phone for daily reminders that you don't need anyone else's permission to want what you want. 

Plus, you'll be getting my five-minute internal authority check-in. It's an audio to help point you back to your own intuition. The women who come to these workshops tell me that they get massive clarity just from the hour we spend together. 

Some say it really helps them make sense of why they're doing what they've been doing. And it's completely free. Go to melissaparsonscoaching.com forward slash workshop to save your spot. Again, that's melissaparsonscoaching.com forward slash workshop. 

Thursday, April 30th at 7 p.m. Eastern. Stop trying to think your way out of being stuck and start trusting yourself instead. I'll see you there.