Never give in!

It is said that Robert the Bruce once sat in a cave watching a spider as it attempted to spin its web. While in exile and hiding after a defeat at the hands of the English, he was inspired by the small arachnid as it tried time and time again, and never gave up. Whether Robert the Bruce was actually inspired by watching a spider spinning its web I know not.  But I can see how such a spectacle could be turned into inspiration.

Inspiration to try again comes from many sources. The great wartime leader Sir Winston Churchill gave a famous speech when Britain was at one of the lowest ebbs in its history, when it seemed that a Nazi invasion was imminent. His speech had echoes of the stirring speech in Shakespeare's Henry V before the battle of Agincourt. One of Churchill's inspirational lines was:

“Never give in. Never give in. Never, never, never, never — in nothing, great or small, large or petty— never give in, except to convictions of honour and good sense. Never yield to force. Never yield to the apparently overwhelming might of the enemy.”

Churchill was nothing if not inspiring. His rhetoric spurred on countless members of the armed forces and civilians to fight against all odds and never give up. That was one of the key reasons why, against overwhelming odds, the British managed to defeat a better equipped, more powerful foe.

Seeing the unseeded players doing battle with the elite tennis stars this week at Wimbledon was a real lesson in perseverance for anyone who watched. They had nothing to lose, and in some cases, actually triumphed. Dustin Brown (a lowly 102 in the world professional rankings) defeated Rafael Nadal, winner of 14 grand slam titles. Yesterday at Wimbledon, Britain's Heather Watson (ranked 109 in the world) came within two points of defeating world number one Serena Williams. You can bet she will come back stronger next time, knowing that she can go toe to toe with the very best in the world and not be embarrassed. No matter how hard or deep the failure, we should never stop thinking about tomorrow.



No matter what anyone tells you, failure is not the end. It is just the start of finding better ways to do something well, as long as you don't give in. We all experience disappointment in our lives. It is how we deal with that disappointment that tells the world about our character. I personally believe that my own failures and disappointments have made me a better teacher. I can empathise with my students when they don't do as well as they had wished, and I can point out to them that it is not the end when they fail. It is simply another opportunity to reflect on their performance and discover what they have to do next time to improve or succeed. Victory after a series of defeats is much sweeter.

If you are fighting a bear, you don't quit when you are tired. You quit when the bear is tired.

Photo by Tom Burke on Wikimedia Commons


Never give in! by Steve Wheeler was written in Plymouth, England and is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License. NB: This post in a previous version was first published in 2011.