At any step, if you quit you would not have butter. Even when the butter appears, you still aren’t finished. The final goal has not been reached.

What stage of life are you in: Milk, cream, unformed butter, whey or butterball?  Have you settled for cream when moving out of your comfort zone will produce your secret dream? What is the dream that you dare not share?

When you quit quickly to avoid the pain or the embarrassment of failure or not doing it perfectly, you can begin a pattern.  As the pattern is repeated, one no longer chooses even to try. Then they live their life vicariously through others or simply shutdown and mechanically move through life doing only what is expected. These patterns through protein synthesis become our way of doing life.

George Bernard Shaw once said, “Keep your dreams alive. Understand to achieve anything requires faith and belief in yourself, vision, hard work, determination, and dedication. Remember all things are possible for those who believe.”

We have a choice how to live our life—fear or faith. Cynicism is often simply a masking ones of fears: Fear of failing, fear of man, fear of tomorrow.  There are literally thousands of fears.

Maya Angelou once said, “There is nothing so pitiful as a young cynic because he has gone from knowing nothing to believing nothing.” Abuse, abandonment and death are dream killers, but Angelou says, “There is no greater agony than bearing an untold story inside you.”

How many untold stories and unsung songs are buried in the cemetery?

We may encounter many defeats, but we must choose not to be defeated. If we have something deposited within us, and we all do, we must endure the labor pains to birth it. Labor hurts. I remember while being in labor with my first son, Jonathan, I said, “I will never have another child!” Then they placed him in my arms and I said, “Well, maybe one more.”

The end result was so worth the pain.

There is a type of bamboo known for its fast -growth. Yet a farmer can water and fertilize a plant for four years but see very little growth. It is growing deep beneath the ground.  Then in a period of five weeks, a sprout, just a sprout, can grow 90 feet!

The reality is that it takes five years for the plant to grow 90 feet. However, you give credit to the only that which is visible.

During those first four years, if the worker were to stop taking care of the sprout, the plant would die. Instead, after years of hard work with almost no visible results, the farmer receives a reward for being persistent.

“No discipline is enjoyable while it is happening--it's painful! But afterward there will be a peaceful harvest of right living for those who are trained in this way.” ( Heb 12:11 NLT)

I sell Mary Kay Cosmetics and I plan is to become a Director this fall. I have been doing it for FOUR years and there are months when I saw little fruit. Frankly there were months when I did little, but blamed others when I saw no results.  That is one of the pitfalls of being in a growth pattern. You blame others for what you do no not see.

A farmer doesn’t blame others when the growth is occurring UNDER the soil. He continues to water and tend and weed. He lives in expectancy.  When it is the plant’s season, it springs forth.

Most small businesses fail the first year. The results aren’t what they hoped for, so they quit. Most are undercapitalized and so there isn’t that yield to keep them in business.  Perhaps they need to work it at another angle.

I remember when I first started selling Mary Kay—I was nothing more than an order taker. I rarely did it the way they suggested. I did it my way.

Let’s see, a 46 year old, debt-free multi-billion company’s ideas vs. my ideas: Which would be more profitable?

Rebellion is deceitful. Surely if I had quit then, it would have been someone else’s fault, because I had not grown enough to see the light. I wanted to put my business situation in the microwave, push one minute and wait for the “ding”!

In the past four years I have learned people skills that I thought I had and didn’t. I will need these as a Director and as a successful human being. I have learned better money management and have sought counsel before making large decisions. Some of my consultants have fallen by the wayside. Sometimes it just isn’t their season and sometimes they just choose to quit.

One of the inherent dangers in trying something hard is failing. If you do fail, will you rise to another challenge or shrug it off with, “I tried that once. It doesn’t work or I can’t do that.”

Let me encourage you, if you are in the midst of something you thought you were supposed to do and seeing nothing take fruition, pull out anything that would choke it, then fertilize it with hope, enthusiasm and work. You may be less than a mile away from seeing the fruition of your dreams. What if you were only days away from that 90-foot growth spurt?

Anyone can quit, but a champion pushes through the pain to win the prize.