Sometimes life gets you down. Sometimes each of us feels like the world is overwhelming.

Decide to not give up. You may not know how to keep going yet. That’s okay. Just decide not to give up for now. Giving up manifests in many ways with people. You know what it looks like. Don’t do it. We’re with you. Others are with you. In your darkest moments our minds seem to think we are entirely alone. We’re not. Other people in your life care about you. Even if no other human cares about you, God cares about you.

Sometimes you’re a stones throw from victory when the urge to give up may seem the strongest. The irony here is that we’re not the best judge of a situation when we’re so close to giving up. Everything may look bleak and we may not be able to see a way forward. Just decide not to give up for now.

Next I’ll tell you a different way to conceptualize your experiences. There is a concept from Eric Ries book, Lean Startup, that applies to not giving up. He calls it the learning cycle. Every time we 'fail' at our intended goal, we learn something. Ries suggests that we then have a choice. Do we persist or do we pivot? If what we learned in the situation that makes us feel beaten also indicates that we’re on the right track, but that we just are at the finish line yet, then persist.

If we learned that that former path was not the way forward because no one seems to value what we did, then pivot to another path that gives you a chance to learn some more. Just don’t give up.

I can hear some of you saying, so pivot or give up, it’s the same thing. No, it’s not! Giving up means you will let life act on you, rather than you acting on life. Don’t give up. This time around, you may not have succeeded as you dreamed or intended. That’s okay if you learned something from it. If the results indicate that you should change paths going forward then actively decide to pivot. You are still the captain of your own ship. Decide which new direction to pivot towards. Move forward. Decide what needs to be done to try that path and see if it is viable.

Don’t give up, though. Fear is something we all have experienced. Fear can paralyze you. It can at least make your journey not as much fun. Give yourself permission to not know yet how you will get through this. Sometimes we learn a little by little in life, precept upon precept. Eureka moments sound seductive, but they are not the prevalent means of success in life with a complete idea, in whole cloth, popping into your brain.

Pivoting is powerful because it recognizes that you’re wrapping up one iteration and about to start another. Life is challenging for all of us. If your life is not at all challenging, then I suggest you’re not trying hard enough to make a difference.

After every iteration in life whether you succeed with fireworks or declare mayday and crash in apparent flames, you learned something from that iteration. Stop for 20-30 minutes and ponder what you learned. What went well? What did not go so well? What should you do better on the next iteration?

Just like sprinting down the street is not as much fun unless you have an end in sight, make your iterations fixed length. Decide if you’ll use one week, two weeks, three weeks or four. Don’t go much beyond 4 weeks though because you want the chance to process your learnings and improve on the next iteration.

Now sometimes our bodies and their emotions just run out of energy like our car running out of gasoline or electric charge. So decide that for X many hours that you will rest and recover and then start your next iteration. Daily our bodies need to rest and recover for at least 5-8 hours. Science has proven the restorative processes from that sleep period help us be ready for the next day. Sometimes our emotions are like that too. It is okay to feel down. Decide how many hours you will rest emotionally by reading a fiction book, or watching video content and set your restart time. Then when that time arrives, get back up and start another iteration. You could be mere meters from the finish line of your particular journey or race.