Hello and welcome back to Second Chance to Live. I am happy to see that you decided to stop by to visit with me. Thank you. As I have shared in other articles, I created Second Chance to Live in February 2007. Over the course of the past 5 or so years, I have written a total of 890 articles.
Because some of my new visitors may not be aware of the articles that I written over the years, I feel led to share some of those articles at this time. One such article was written under the title, Inch by Inch. For sake of the search engines, I have changed the name of the the article.
Inch by Inch
Posted by Second Chance to Live on March 30, 2007
Welcome back to my world. I am glad you decided to stop by and rest. Recently I have been asked how I overcame specific challenges after the car accident, when I was 10 years old. If you would like to read more about my process and my journey, please read my post, My Journey thus Far). In many cases I applied persistence to the task at hand. Perseverance coupled with persistence helped me to overcome many obstacles.
Dogged determination has helped me to keep going despite disappointments and set backs throughout my life. For many years, my will to endure was driven by perfectionism and shame. I functioned to survive emotionally and spiritually. Perfectionism and shame motivated me, however they never let me celebrate my success. The bar of achievement seemed to be raised on a regular basis. I was driven to defend my being through achieving.
As I have shared in another post, I became what Terry Kellogg first posited, a human doing.
I would recommend — from what I have learned through my struggle – that you make excellence and progress your motto’s, as you heal and recover. My healing and recovery process continues to this day, although my brain injury happened nearly 40 years ago. I have to overcome on a daily basis from the affects of interacting with non-disabled individuals.
It is as though I have to defend myself because I have an invisible disability. I am frustrated by the indolence of those individuals who choose not to understand. They seem to want to blame me for their lack of tolerance. I am sure you can identify with me on some level, even if you do not have a disability. For those in the disabled community who are reading this post… I hear you shouting, “Amen Brother!”
For some, ignorance seems to be a terminal disease. Thank God that I do not have to buy into their unwillingness to understand that I have a disability. I am not the problem.
In my personal life, I learn best through repeated repetition. Physically speaking, as I train in the martial arts, muscle memory is essential for me to learn and retain new information. As I train, I drill, and then drill again and then drill some more. Repetition is the mother of all that I learn. I believe that tenacity played a big role in my learning how to walk, talk and speak in complete sentences after waking from the 3-week long coma nearly 40 years ago.
For those who have to re-learn, please do not give up on your process, a loving God or yourself. More will be revealed in time. Read my post, Small Successes. As you keep marching — figuratively speaking — before long you will look be able to look back and see how far you have traveled on your journey.
I continue to learn through repetition in all of the dimensions that make me who I am in this life, i.e. my soul life, my physical endeavors and my spiritual life. The difference these days is that I am motivated to succeed by my desire to pursue excellence, not perfection. I have given myself permission to fall and get back up, because I realize that I do not have to judge my efforts.
If you have any questions or would like to make a comment please use my Contact Information Page.again. Progress not perfection has become my creed.
Receive more articles like this one simply by clicking on Subscribe to Second Chance to Live by email.
All material presented on Second Chance to Live is copyright and cannot be, copied, reproduced, or distributed in any way without the express, written consent of Craig J. Phillips, MRC, BA Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs CC BY-NC-ND
Leave a Reply