Think like a Viking: Part twenty

This week's Viking quote

Stubbornness brings either greater humiliation or greater honour. - Hrafnkels saga Freysgoða

I've been stubborn on occasions and it's brought both humiliation and honour - Let's call it success though, not honour. Stubbornness can give rise to great positivity depending on how and when it's applied and by being somewhat stubborn by nature one can move more effectively forward.

Think

Resilience, persistence, determination, consistency, stoutness of mind and heart, tenacity, resolve and the never-quit attitude. These are forms of stubbornness in my opinion - You know, the refusal to give in and stubbornly driving towards a positive result.

It's easy to capitulate when things get difficult, it doesn't take grit or staying power to give up but to stay the course? Yes, it often takes much endurance and deploying the elements required to bring about a good result often requires stubbornness together with those other things I mention. The stubbornness becomes like wind in the sails pushing things along, with the help of the mast and tiller, towards the desired result.

Of course, being stubborn can have negative effects as well.

Imagine

How about a colleague in a workplace who stubbornly refuses to apply themselves to a team-project causing the others in the team to have to do more work and putting the project, their own job-security or work-relationships in jeopardy. That's not positive at all. Maybe it's a person who stubbornly refuses to take care of their own health, a diabetic for instance. Ultimately that stubbornness and refusal to do the right thing will result in a negative result for them and a more difficult scenario for their family or friends perhaps.

There's just a couple of examples of stubbornness being a negative trait but there are many more in life - I've done a few of the negative ones myself, to my own detriment - Maybe others have too.

Apply

I've achieved great results in my life through being stubborn. There's times I could have plonked myself down, emotionally or physically, and simply capitulated. Yes, it would have been easy; but is easy a result? I don't think so.

Sometimes, in the face of great odds, I've found it within myself to stand, emotionally or physically, and take one more step, to do that difficult thing, to lift heavy shit, as I like to say. It's my stubborn nature, my never quit attitude, that has helped me find and apply the other success-elements that have eventually won the day. Thank you stubbornness.

Staying the course has delivered me amazingly good results and many monumental failures too. I've taken, and celebrated, those successes and have learned from the failures, evaluated, strategised and redeployed; that's the way of life I believe. I've also learned the need to carefully select where I apply my stubbornness, my will to succeed, as some battles aren't worth fighting and some things, or people, just not worth fighting for. One must know, or endeavour to know as best as one can.

So that's it for this week, a quote about applying stubbornness to one's own benefit and knowing when not to. Humiliation and honour are juxtaposed within the phrase but the point is clear I believe. How does this work for us in modern society? How can we apply this phrase to our lives? Well, I said my piece, now how about you. Do you have a comment, opinion or thought? Drop it below, I'm keen to hear it. Maybe you've applied stubbornness to great effect, maybe you applied it incorrectly. Share below if you feel inclined, or be stubborn and do not.

Skol.