In this episode, Dr. Cari Wise emphasizes the importance of continuing to make efforts even when we don’t see immediate results, using a personal story about befriending a feral cat to illustrate the point.
Dr. Wise encourages listeners to have faith that their efforts are accumulating beneath the surface and that eventually, their desired outcomes will become a reality.
She concludes by reminding listeners that their only job is to take the first step and continue persevering through the journey, as this is the key to achieving their goals.
Key Takeaways:
- It is importance to persevere on the journey toward achieving goals.
- We must embrace discomfort and uncertainty in order to experience personal growth.
- Taking the first step and continuing the journey even when we don’t see evidence of our efforts is the key to achieving desired outcomes.
Music Credit: Music by Lesfm from Pixabay
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EPISODE TRANSCRIPT
This transcript is auto-generated and may contain typos.
Hi there. I’m Dr. Cari Wise, veterinarian, certified life coach, and certified quantum human design specialist. If you are a veterinary professional looking to uplevel your life and your career, or maybe looking to go in an entirely new direction, then what I talk about here on the Joyful DVM podcast is absolutely for you. Let’s get started. Hello, my friends.
Welcome back to another episode of the Joyful DVM podcast. Today I wanna spend a few minutes talking about the power of perseverance. Whenever there’s something that we want in our lives, it’s easy for us to think about that thing that we want, but it’s hard to actually take the steps to make it happen. And oftentimes, when we do start taking action to create something new in our lives,
it doesn’t happen quickly enough for us to continue that momentum. We usually give up before we even get to where we wanna go. So why do we do this? Well, this is just a normal part of the human experience. We feel resistance toward the things that we want that are different than what we have right now. So even though we want them,
we do genuinely want them. We want things to change. Perhaps it’s relationships, perhaps it’s something to do with our physical health. Perhaps it has to do with our career because we do want something to change. We want something to be different. What we have to recognize is that to be different, that means we have to move from where we are right now.
And when it comes to the way that our brain works, where we are right now is just good enough. It’s good enough to keep you safe. It’s good enough to keep you from being in uncertainty. And so therefore, that resistance is kind of a survival mechanism. It’s this thing that we do to keep ourselves from stepping out into the unknown. Now,
here in the modern world, the unknown really isn’t that dangerous. But if we don’t realize that this is happening, that this resistance that we are experiencing is part of a mechanism to keep us from moving forward, we will actually give into the resistance and we’ll stay exactly where we are all along the way, still thinking about the things that we want to change and beating ourselves up for not making it happen.
We really have to consider what does perseverance bring into the equation? So when I think about perseverance, it is continuing to take the actions or continuing to make the effort, even when I don’t see tangible evidence that it’s making any difference at all in my journey. I was reminded of that just this evening when I had the opportunity to finally pet this cat that I have been trying to befriend since the middle of summer.
So last summer, this cat showed up on our property, this black cat. He showed up on our property, and I promptly named him Jet because that just seemed appropriate. And initially I was just happy to just see him like I was just excited to see him. I love cats. You guys know this, right? So here’s this black cat,
and I had a suspicion that I knew who this cat was, because about three summers before there had been a cat that had come and had had kittens underneath our deck. And I had not even known that this had happened until one afternoon I saw these kittens. And so then I waited very patiently at the side of the deck, and I was able to grab one of ’em,
and I grabbed this tiny little black kitten at that point. And as I got to looking at this kitten, I realized that the kitten was younger than weaning age. And so I let that kitten go, and the mother cat raised her kitten. This was a feral cat underneath our deck. And then as they got to be bigger, then I started setting traps to catch them.
And I wanted to catch the mother too. Well, I caught the mother kind of earlier than I intended to before I caught the kittens. And this is kind of turning into a long, rambling story. Bottom line, when it was all said and done, I caught all the kittens except for the black kitten that I had originally caught with my own hands.
And I never did see the mother cat after I caught the other kittens. So the mother cat and the black kitten disappeared, and that was that. But I knew that there was a cat living on our property because I would see footprints in the snow and in the mud, but I just never saw got to see any cat. And this had been going on for literally for like two to three years.
So this year, over Labor Day weekend, we were outside, we were building a deck, and my husband said, Hey, there’s a black cat down there and down there being down where we keep our goats. And so sure enough, here was this black cat down there. And so I started like walking that way and just calling, you know,
kitty kitty kind of thing. And it meowed at me and I thought, huh, maybe this is a nice cat. Maybe it’s somebody’s cat, maybe it’s missing. So as I walked up there, then it backed away. It was real hesitant. So I went inside and got some canned cat food and brought it out and kind of set it somewhat near it.
And then it came up at ate. And as I, it was eating, it was probably 10 to 15 feet away from me, didn’t want me to get any closer. And I looked at it and I could tell that it was an adult cat for sure, that it looked like it had had a few battles, looked male. And in my mind I thought,
you know, this really could be that kitten from a couple of years ago. So fast forward over the next few weeks or months, actually, we were able to keep feeding the cat, getting it kind of closer and closer to the hou house for it to eat. And I was able finally at one point, to trap it. So I trapped it and I took it into the clinic.
And we, of course, he was mad, you know, feral cat all the way around like striking at the cage. You know, we put the blanket on it and all the things. He was just not happy and confirmed it was male, got him neutered, tested him, vaccinated him all the things, brought him home, kept him in the garage for a couple of days,
which he did not appreciate. And then let him go. And since then, he’s been around. So he would come up and he would still eat to the point that it had gotten to be a really good routine where he would even come up on the deck and eat there. So he could put his food there. He would come around the same time every day.
If he hurt us outside, he would come around. He never wanted to be touched or anything. If you got too close, he would leave. He wouldn’t let you go near him when he was eating, but he would still come. And this had been going on for months and months and months. And then it got colder and colder and colder.
And here in Missouri, we have just recently had some ridiculously cold weather for us. So Sub-Zero temperatures. And as I saw this coming on last week, and he had been more and more comfortable around us, I started trying to get him to come into the garage to eat his canned food. So I put the canned food out and he came in and he ate some canned food.
He didn’t come all the way in, but kind of the way in. He licked some of it, and then he kind of got it spooked himself, and he ran out the door. So then Friday night, I thought, I can, I think I can actually do this. So I put the food on a plate and I pushed it into the door a little bit further,
and then I stepped, stood back kind of behind the door and let him come in because he could see me there. But at this point, the food is about four feet from where he would be e from where I was standing. And that was a distance that he had been comfortable with for quite some time. So as soon as he just cleared the door to where I could shut it behind him,
I just slammed the door shut and locked him in the garage. Now he let out some horrible, you know, kind of meows initially, but he’s been there since then. And so now at the day, at the time of this recording, he’s been in that garage for about five days, hiding the whole time. I’m putting out food and water,
canned food. He has an will eat some treats out of my hand, some really stinky, like true trite type treats. He’s been doing that for a few months now. Not if I get very close, if I just have to hold it out, but he, he would do that. So he was doing that in the garage, and I never knew where he was gonna be every day.
So every day it’s kind of like what new places he found to hide. And he is found all kinds of places to hide. And tonight when I went out there and I found where he was laying, and I walked over and I went and got him some, some cho treat, and I took it over and I was letting him lick it, and I put some on my fingers and let him lick it off my fingers,
something that he had also been doing for a while. But tonight I got to pet him. And I didn’t just get to pet him, like I petted him a little bit. And then he kinda leaned and I petted him a little bit more. And we were talking like full head scratches, chin scratches. Let me pat down his back, rolled over on his side,
started doing biscuits, started purring. And I was just reminded of the value of perseverance. See, I’m really, I’m bringing this back to a point. It’s not just a cat story. So I was really reminded of the value of perseverance, of continuing to make the effort when you don’t see any tangible evidence that it’s making a difference at all. And sometimes to the contrary,
where you have those moments where it looks like you’ve taken five steps backwards, like the day when I locked him in the garage five days ago, and he’s howling and he just wants to get out. And I think I have lost all of the trust that I’ve built with this cat over months. But lo and behold, tonight, massive breakthrough. But what if I’d given up?
What if when he held the other night, I had just let him out? What if I had stopped trying to make the little efforts that I was believing would get me where I wanted to go, which was building trust with this animal in this case? What if I just stopped trying altogether that I never would’ve had that experience tonight that I had? And who knows what experiences I’m gonna have from here forward?
Because we’ve definitely crossed this, this milestone in this relationship. And it’s no different when we are trying to build anything new in our lives. So whether it’s new relationships with ourselves, it is new levels of health with our physical being, it is a new path in our own careers, it is a new level in our relationships. There is going to be a period of time where we are making efforts and we are not seeing any tangible evidence that those efforts are making any difference at all.
And if we stop, if we decide it’s not fast enough, if we decide it’s too hard, then we will never be anywhere different than where we are right now. This is critically important for us to realize that just because we have clarity around where we want to go doesn’t mean we get to snap our fingers and instantly be there. It’s going to require something of us to get there.
And what it requires of us is personal growth. It is an internal journey of perseverance. It is being willing to feel uncomfortable, to feel uncertain while still being completely dedicated to the end result that we are working to create. And then just having the faith that as long as we continue to take our own individual small steps, that they actually are stacking up underneath the surface where we can’t see them.
And that eventually that thing that we are trying to create in our lives is going to be reality. This is how we approach anything that we are trying to create in our lives. This is what we’re doing. Even if we don’t see it. And it’s when it’s these bigger things, these bigger changes that we want for ourselves that we’re already doubting, that we have the ability to create that little bit of doubt,
that self-doubt, that uncertainty that’s there really plays into our ability to persevere, to just continue the journey even when we can’t see when the journey’s going to end. So my friends, as you consider what it is that you want for your life, what in your life you might want to change again, whether or not it’s something to do with your career,
your relationships, your physical being, your emotional wellbeing, something tangible that you wanna create a new home, whatever it is that you have on your heart that you wanna create, I want you just to remember that your only job is to take the first step and then tomorrow you take the next step and the next day you take the next step. And I promise you,
if you continue to persevere through the little steps, you will be surprised and delighted the day that you finally get there. All right, my friends, that’s gonna wrap it up for this week. I will see you next time. Bye for now.