Only by enduring loneliness can we keep prosperity.
Author: Insight Li Siyuan
Are there any such people around you:
Once he sat in the corner and no one paid attention, suddenly one day, he unexpectedly surpassed everyone around him.
Many people attribute such success to luck, but they do not see their days of obscurity and efforts to take root.
Dripping stone through is not a day's work, rope sawing wood is not a day's work.
The so-called luck is nothing more than sitting on a cold bench, enduring hard days, and withstanding temptation.
In one difficult night after another, a flash of morning light was ushered in.
01
Grinding is the best practice in the world.
Zeng Guofan once said a sentence: "Strengthen his will, work hard, work hard, no matter how big or small, he will achieve something." ”
A person's success is inseparable from hard work and diligence.
Even the best jade needs to be carved, and even the best talent needs to be polished.
As we all know, when Zeng Guofan was young, he was extremely stupid.
He also took the exam seven times before he barely passed, memorizing a book until the middle of the night, even the thief would memorize it, and he would not.
But Zeng Guofan has the greatest advantage, willing to compete with himself.
In the matter of reading, he stipulated that books that he could not understand could not understand one sentence and did not read the next sentence; today it did not work, and he would read it again tomorrow.
In the matter of fighting a war, he led the Xiang army, and every time he marched forward a short distance, he dug ditches, built walls, hardened villages, and fought stupid battles, never tired or annoyed.
In the matter of learning, he set himself the goal of "twelve daily lessons", no matter how busy and tired he was every day, he had to complete it.
He even exhorted himself:
If you enter a point of virtue today, you will accumulate a liter of valley; tomorrow you will cultivate a point of karma and count the remaining money.
It was with this persistence that Zeng Guofan achieved a career and eventually became a famous minister in the late Qing Dynasty.
The sword blade came out of the grinding, and the plum blossom fragrance came from the bitter cold.
There is no shortcut to anything you do.
If you want to write a good article, you need to sharpen your pen word by word;
If you want to practice your skills well, you need one action and one action grinding technique;
If you want to become a great instrument, you need to grind experience and insight one thing at a time.
There is a passage in the Asuka Collection:
"Only through hellish tempering can the power of heaven be created; only the fingers that have flowed through blood can play out the world's best songs."
Without the grinding of grit, there is no sparkle of pearls, and without the polishing of axe chisels, there is no brilliance of diamonds.
Only a life that can withstand the wind and rain can shine brightly.
02
Boiling is the strongest taste of life.
There is a saying: "Where there is any life to hang, but it is suffering." ”
Many times, there is no secret to success, but it is to eat the suffering that others can't eat, to be tired of what others can't stand, and to survive the difficulties that others can't survive.
When Zeng Guofan first went to Changsha to create the Xiang Army, he asked the local green battalion soldiers, whose military discipline had long been abolished, to conduct daily exercises with the Xiang Army, which caused dissatisfaction.
At the instigation of Admiral Bao Qibao, he was almost killed by the Green Battalion soldiers in his mansion.
Zeng Guofan, who was extremely aggrieved at that time, originally wanted to write a complaint to the emperor, but later he thought about it a lot.
He decided to take the Xiang army he had recruited and go to the relatively secluded Hengyang to train troops, and then fight several victories to prove himself.
Without any experience in leading soldiers, and even with a serious emptiness of military salaries, Zeng Guofan learned everything from scratch.
Finally, after many hardships, in the Battle of Xiangtan in April of the fourth year of Xianfeng, the Taiping Army was defeated with fewer victories and more victories, and the Qing army won the first victory.
There is a saying that says, "Those who can't defeat you will only make you stronger." ”
When you are in trouble, even if you can only make an inch of difficult progress, you will never easily take a step back.
Sometimes when you stay up, you will find that you have come a long way and survived the most difficult hurdle.
There is also a story.
In 1863, Zeng Guofan became acquainted with Rong Hong, an aspiring young man who had returned from studying at Yale University in the United States.
Rong Hong was impressed by Zeng Guofan's foresight, and at the same time, he was entrusted by him to go abroad to purchase machinery, come back to open a factory, and produce firearms.
However, in the process, Rong Hong felt that he hit a wall everywhere, it was difficult to do it everywhere, and even proposed to Zeng Guofan the idea of not doing it.
Who knows Zeng Guofan said:
"The old man has lived for more than fifty years, and he has experienced a lot of things, and he knows that the world has been provoked and forced to become half of them."
The difficulties can be seen as incentives and persecutions. ”
This remark made Rong Hong very encouraged, and finally shouldered the heavy burden and successfully started the foreign affairs movement.
"Talents are forced out, and skills are boiled out."
Life, the testing ground, is actually very fair.
Can't stay, out, survive, outstanding.
If a person wants to grow, he must be able to bear the pressure, bear the responsibility, and withstand the blow and pain.
03
There is a saying that goes, "The more difficult it is, the more you cultivate your mind." ”
Only when one persists in the most painful, most desperate, and most disheartened can one win the final victory.
Zeng Guofan's life was extremely bumpy.
Although he made great contributions to the imperial court, the Xianfeng Emperor used his Xiang army to suppress the Taiping Heavenly Kingdom, while at the same time unwilling to give him too much military and political power.
In the seventh year of Xianfeng, Zeng Guofan's father died, and he used this as an excuse to give the emperor a recital.
In it, he mentioned that he was loyal to the country and sincere in his heart, but he had always been just a "registered waiter", because he had no military power and financial power, so he was "difficult to do things" everywhere.
Originally, he wanted to ask the emperor for real power in the name of his father's "return to the home system", but he did not expect that the Xianfeng Emperor actually allowed him to go back and left him idle at home for more than a year.
At this most difficult time, many people may choose to give up, but Zeng Guofan is not discouraged.
He began to shut himself in his room and spend his days reflecting on the reasons for his failure.
Not only did he read history books every day, such as "Zuo Zhuan", "Shi Ji", "Zizhi Tongjian", etc., in order to prevent the lessons of the past, but also summed up the experience and lessons, and vowed to change his too arrogant and tough character.
He wrote in his diary:
"In the past years, the conceited ability was very large, bendable and stretchable, feasible and hidden, and every time I saw people were not."
Since Ding Wei and Peng Wu repented and realized greatly, they knew that they had no skills at all, and they had seen that everything was a little bit of a good thing, so nine years since Peng Wu was nine years old, which was very different from before the age of forty. ”
Later, the situation outside became tense, and the generals of the Xiang Army disobeyed the dispatch, and the Xianfeng Emperor had to ask Zeng Guofan to go out of the mountains again.
It was not until the xianfeng decade that Zeng Guofan, who was nearly fifty years old, was awarded the title of Governor of Liangjiang, Minister of Chincha, and commanded the military affairs of the four provinces, truly deserved, ushering in the peak of life.
The British writer Neville Chamberlain once said:
"People cannot reach dawn except by road through the night."
Only when a person abandons impetuosity, endures loneliness, and even puts down the rush to achieve quick success, can he become a real instrument.
The more you are left out in the cold, the more you can't give up on yourself.
The less optimistic you are, the more you have to take root and grow.
The more you seem to have no way back, the more you insist on gritting your teeth and moving forward.
▽
Zeng Guofan's life can be described as countless sufferings, countless setbacks, and even countless experiences of despair.
But in the end, he relied on the insistence of sitting on the cold bench for nearly half of his life, from the world's first stupid person to the world's first complete person.
The road of life is obstructed and long.
Slowly grind, hone your heart and perseverance.
Clumsily to go through, to survive all the hardships and ups and downs.
When your wings are growing and your ability is getting longer, the long way is long, there will eventually be a turn, the aftertaste is bitter, and there will eventually be sweetness.
Give it a thumbs up and encourage your friends.