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Proverb: When the going gets tough, the tough get going
First off, have you read yesterday’s post about going back to square one?
If you haven’t, you might want to take about a minute and a half to go back and do that first.
Today’s proverb, when the going gets tough, the tough get going, is closely related to what it means to go back to square one.
Life is full of failures and challenges on multiple levels.
They tend to make things complicated and tough.
The thing is, when life throws you a curveball, you should be able to rise to the occasion.
In other words, when the going gets tough, you get going.
When the going gets tough, the tough get going means when times are hard, you work hard.
It’s a sign of having a strong character and determination.
Being tough doesn’t necessarily mean being physically big and strong.
You don’t have to be able to endure Canadian winters or Osaka summers.
Just as there are various types of challenging situations, there is a wide range of toughness.
The one thing we can say for sure is that when the going gets tough, the tough get going.
The English language students I’ve worked with who really want to improve their skills and attain a level they are content with are tough in their own way.
Most of them are mentally strong.
They have faced frustration and dissatisfaction and perhaps, at one or more points in their journey, lost faith in their ability to speak English fluently.
I’ll not deny that for most of us, it is a long, hard journey to attain fluency in a second language.
Perseverers can take pride in the fact that when the going got tough, they—the tough—got going.
Flesch-Kincaid Readability Test
This post is understandable by someone with at least a 7th-grade education (age 12).
On the Flesch-Kincaid reading-ease test, this post scores 77.
The higher the score on a scale of 0 – 100, the easier the passage is to read.