What Keeps You Afloat?

As a child I spent quite a lot of time designing and building rafts.  I can remember dragging logs from great distance to try to tie together with my siblings so that we could set sail across the pond.  Important to say that these creations sank time and time again.   Funny to think back now about how sure we were every time that we were going to be able to sail across the pond and on to new adventures.  With every try we improved the design and it seemed that each and every time we only made it a small way from shore before the inevitable, we began to sink.  Water would gush between and over the logs and only float back to the surface of the pond after we had all jumped ship. Then somehow we got the raft back to the shore and started the improvements.  It is perplexing to think back and realize that we never seemed to get discouraged only more determined to keep learning from our mistakes.  I feel like with our work and worry we can take on a lot of water and get that familiar sinking feeling.  What keeps  you afloat?  What keeps you going back to the design and beginning again after a setback?  Its a tough thing to do, trying to make a change, or complete a project, make a plan or improve a system.  There are always challenges and set backs.  We can either give up because its hard or seems impossible.  Sometimes we are faced with countess critics and our defeats start to feel like billboard announcements.  How do we get back to lashing those logs and trying again?  I think we need to make sure we know why the success is important to us.  Is it just to tick a box, stroke an item off a task list, or is it something that will create a great change, move closer to a goal, bring joy, discover something new in ourselves and others or build a skill. Figuring out our why can help us to keep focused on where we know we want to sail and help us with the motivation to keep going even when there are set backs.