“We choose to go to the moon in this decade and do the other things, not because they are easy, but because they are hard.” The words of John F Kennedy during his speech at Rice University in 1962.

This man clearly knew what he was talking about. Achieving difficult things can bring the greatest rewards, but they require a level of sustained effort that is sometimes exhausting.

If something is difficult to achieve, it is all too tempting to give up and admit defeat. Trying to succeed at anything creative can be particularly difficult because the audience is subjective.

Recently, the author JK Rowling spoke again about the number of rejections she received from publishers before finally gaining success. This gives me hope.

By completing a book which has been well received by friends and family, I succeeded in achieving my first goal, but now I would like to put it out into the world. So, how do I persevere with something difficult and never give up?

This morning, I was having one of my more in depth thoughts as I stood in the shower. It’s my 42^nd birthday in the next couple of weeks and I was reflecting on things that have gone well and things that have not gone well in my life so far. My general conclusion was that success for me nearly always depends on my level of commitment.

I believe that once you have decided what it is you really want to achieve, you have to go for it. I know that if I was starving, my entire focus would be on finding food. I would put all my effort into that without distraction.

I have already learnt that being a butterfly brain and dabbling half-heartedly at lots of different things, never really committing to anything, achieves little.

So my conclusion for this week, while I was washing my hair, is to keep shooting for the moon with even more sustained effort.

S