Photo by Angela Kirk
With all the noise and chaos going on in the world, you may have missed a monumental event. The NASA land rover Perseverance landed on Mars last Thursday. Doc and I were lucky to catch the event live on TV and it gave both Doc and this canine goosebumps when it finally touched down safely. We cheered and clapped right along with those NASA scientists. Think about it, NASA literally shot a dune buggy into space and landed it on Mars. Wow!
What surprised me was that the first thing that the rover did after it landed was Tweet a message back to earth that let NASA know it was safe, then it tweeted: ” Perseverance will get you anywhere.” ” What a statement!” I said as I turned to Doc and she nodded back to me in agreement. That one word “perseverance” really got me to thinking about how we can move forward in our lives.
When you think about wanting to accomplish a goal you can do one of three things, get stuck dreaming about a goal and not moving forward, start making excuses and giving up, or setting a goal and taking the steps necessary to achieve it and not giving up until you succeed. People certainly have different motivation levels when it comes to change. Change for many feels so uncomfortable that they would rather stay with the devil they know. Doc takes the “no excuses” stance for herself and me. It can be annoying at times but she’s right. She says just keep moving forward even if you’re anxious or scared because things are usually much scarier in our head than in reality.
The scientists and engineers at NASA worked for about eleven years to build Perseverance. I am almost positive that they made mistakes and missteps along the way, but they kept on going. Its inevitable that in life we will make mistakes as we journey forward but Doc says she has learned more from her errors than her successes. The most important thing is to never give up. Believe in yourself and find others that believe in you. Sometimes perfect strangers or loved ones will show up to cheer you on. It’s always helpful to have good cheerleaders in your life to lift you up when you get discouraged.
The most important thing to remember is not to let anyone discourage your dreams because perseverance will get you anywhere you want to go, even to Mars.