We like to call it TENACITY but the outside world calls it by other names like “strong-willed” or “stubborn.”
Somehow they think this trait is a negative thing. I think of it as a powerful gift in determination and consistently making that choice to be determined to bring a goal to fruition rather than being another cog in the wheel like everyone else.
My children even gained a facial expression that screams tenacity that I have seen in my father and probably appears on my own face. The tongue is poked out in the corner and the effort just zings through the shoulders and into the eye brows. It shouts the words of “The Little Engine That Could” chugging along mumbling, “I think I can. I think I can, I think I can.”
Sure, we all share blue eyes. We all share fair skin. We all share a silly streak and a higher than average level than intelligence. What always stands out though is our stubborn streak.
My brother, John, had Down’s Syndrome and the same ridiculous “got to hold on tight because I will do what I will do whether you like it or not or actually, just try to stop me!”
My tenacity helped me to take leaps and bounds when people didn’t even believe I could put my toe in the water.
My daughter made her way into a top notch school and now is being courted by a top notch graduate school even after attending what we fondly call a “ghetto high school.” She knew what she wanted and off she went, even when others never thought she could.
Yes, we will tell you “Tenacity is the polite word for stubborn.” It all sounds good to me!
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Julie Jordan Scott has been a Life & Creativity
Coach, Writer, Facilitator and Teleclass Leader since
1999. She is also an award winning Actor, Director,
Artist and Mother Extraordinaire. She was twice the
StoryTelling Slam champion in Bakersfield.
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