Why Standing Your Ground is a Good Thing
This is Good Thing #98. You’re correct, that is NINETY-EIGHT of ONE-HUNDRED regular weekly Good Things. After that, this weekly newsletter becomes an occasional. It’ll still be there, just not on a regular, weekly basis. But you can still influence the remaining regular (is a) Good Thing posts. Just pitch me your Good Thing idea and I’ll see if I can write something about it. Agreedo?
It’s a battle of enemies. A fight between two nemeses with a long-held grudge1. A bout between two titans where global supremacy is the only victory.
Or it’s a parking ticket.
Whatever the fight, whatever has come along your way, this week’s newsletter is all about standing up, and standing your ground.
Have you ever had something, a perceived injustice, happen to you or to someone you love, and you simply let it slide? Where you let pass something that you knew was wrong?
Unless you’re some sort of superhuman, and good work if you are, there is no way you couldn’t answer both Yes and No to those questions. And that just makes you, you know, human. But winning or losing the battle isn't the issue, the issue is when we give up on standing up altogether, even if we think it's the right thing to do.
Of course, this is easy to say, but it’s often far harder to actually do. And quite often the reason we don’t stand up for things isn’t because we lack courage, but because we’ve let our losses outshine our wins. Because we’ve stood our ground before, failed, often repeatedly, and now we just can’t bring ourselves to do it all over again.
On a daily level, my usual battle is with our cat Molly, seen above questioning her inside-cat status. In real life, she’s adorable and she pretty much runs our house. Of course, this is a problem when she decides that she wants to sit in the warmest part of the house, which is usually the keyboard on my laptop. Now, when faced with this, I have two options. I can either skip work for the day, or I can stand my ground. And while the temptation is always there to simply call the end of work at 9:30am, I usually instead choose to face the claws and stand up to our little fur ball. I fail quite often, and I have the scars on my hands to prove it, but time and time again I come back for another round. Giving up would put me out of a job, literally.
But on a more serious note, politically, personally, pandemically, perhaps more so than any era in our history, we’re all facing challenges. And like most of these challenges, it’s very possible that our fight won’t be successful. Or, at least, not how we want it to be. But the important thing isn’t the successful victory, it’s being willing to stand your ground. The only way we succeed is to step up.
Standing your ground can be hard going, but it’s what will get us through the challenges we all face.
And that is why, Standing Your Ground is a very Good Thing.
Standing your ground doesn't always mean winning. What's important is the standing.
While you might not win your battle, you'll never win any battles if you don't turn face them.
Bending is okay too. More on that after the squiggle.
Bend, don’t break
You don’t have to win. And you don’t have to lose. You could, you know, compromise.
See, whenever we go into a fight, the goal is most often to win. It’s why we stand our ground at all, right? But what happens if we don’t get everything we want? If when we go all in, we lose and get nothing. It’s not exactly a great experience. But if we can find a compromise, a way where we all get something we want, then we might stand our ground a little more often.
Sometimes it’s not about a big victory, but about what you can achieve along the way.
Besides, always winning is kind of dull.
Did you enjoy (is a) Good Thing?
Hit the button below and get all of this Good Thing goodness delivered to your inbox every Tuesday*.
*Why Tuesday? Because on Monday it seems like you’re riding high from the weekend, on Wednesday you’re already over the hump, and on Thursday and Friday you may as well be on the weekend. But Tuesday, well Tuesday is the day you need a boost. And (is a) Good Thing is just the thing to do that boosting.
Got a Good Thing worth sharing?
Are you a person, cat, or hamster, with something good on your mind? Would you like to see it shared in a bigger and brighter way in stylish yellow branding? Hit me up with your suggestions, and you might just see your Good Thing appearing on one of these emails.
One that has lasted so long that neither quite remembers when it started, or why.