If You Don’t Give Up, You Just Might Make It

If you don’t give up, you just might make it. If you do, you almost never will.

There are no guarantees.

You can work hard, make good work and terrible work, take risks, get rejected, sell nothing, start again, and still not get where you thought you were going.

Persistence doesn’t guarantee success. Giving up is remarkably effective at guaranteeing the opposite.

Creativity makes this difficult because it rarely provides evidence on schedule.

A painting sells and you think you’ve cracked it. Then nothing sells. Something you believe in gets ignored, while something you almost didn’t show connects immediately.

There is very little logic to it.

But persistence doesn’t mean blindly doing the same thing.

Change. Question what you’re doing. Paint over things. Throw ideas away. Take risks. Adjust. Start again.

There’s a difference between giving up on an idea and giving up on the whole pursuit.

You don’t even need to believe every day that you’re going to make it.

You just need to come back.

Persistence creates possibilities. Quitting removes them.

That’s why I like the words “just might.”

Not you will. Not anything is possible.

You might.

That’s enough.