Stubbornness is like a two-sided coin. Heads says your stubbornness can turn into a reason you have something to be proud of. Tails says it can go south real fast and you end up regretting it. The good side of being stubborn can be linked with determination. It is that moment where you simply shut down all the voices around you and decide to follow what the right path looks like in your head. Sometimes, you just have this feeling that you need to try something for yourself, even when everyone around you seems to think you're making the wrong decision.
One time I was really stubborn was when I tried doing something almost everyone had a negative thing to say about. It was an entirely new approach, and everyone I knew kept giving me a thousand and one reasons why it was a bad idea. They weren't entirely direct about it, but it was subtle. Understandably, most of them had not-so-encouraging experiences trying it, but I knew that everyone might not have the same experience in life. Something that worked in my favour might not work for another person, and something that didn't work for them didn't necessarily mean it wouldn't work for me. So I simply refused to give up. I gave it my all, and it worked. Now here's the funny part, all the people who were being negative at the start came back and were appreciating the results. It made me think about how people most times want to see results from the very beginning, which is why they might not see the reason you're doing something. Once everything turns out good, then they're convinced. Suddenly, the thing they were subtly discouraging you from doing doesn't seem like such a bad idea anymore.
But most times, it doesn't always turn out good. Most times, at the end, you realise they were right. That is where it all gets tricky, because how would you have concluded something wasn't for you when you haven't tried? I remember when I had to spend money on something I did, something people clearly told me wasn't worth doing, but I insisted. At the end of the day, I wasted energy, time and hard-earned resources. It was just all regrets. And that experience made me realise that sometimes people aren't trying to stop you because they don't understand your vision. Sometimes, they genuinely see something you don't. The difficult part is knowing when you're being discouraged because people are simply afraid of something new and when you're being warned because you're actually walking into a bad decision.
Most times, stubbornness isn't always bad, but you have to realise it's a 50/50. You can either be determined to try something and get good results, or you can end up wishing you listened. You don't always know which side of the coin you're going to get until you take the risk and see how things turn out. Sometimes, your stubbornness turns out for good. Other times, it becomes the reason you have a lesson to learn. Either way, I think the real growth comes from learning to tell the difference between being determined to follow your path and simply being too stubborn to admit that you might be on the wrong one.
Image is Ai-generated
