Lessons from Christopher Columbus’ Life

There are many important and valuable life lessons that we can gather from the adventurous life of one of history’s most famous pioneers. Christopher Columbus had many ups and downs in his life, but he never let that stop him from what he wanted to achieve. I think we can learn most from Christopher Columbus strong and brilliant character. We can learn from his innovative thinking, persistence, and his mental strength. Columbus was definitely a man to be admired and deserves all the credit and glory he receives in our country and around the world. 

When I say we can learn from Christopher Columbus’s innovative thinking, I mean the fact that he believed that man could travel west to the new world. The prior belief was that you could only travel around the tip of Africa and east to go to the new world. Christopher Columbus challenged this belief with his own firm belief. With funding and great help from King Ferdinand II of Aragon and Queen Isabella of Castile, he set out on his voyage to the new world with his route that went west instead of east. Columbus successfully completed his voyage and found the Americas. The point of this is that America would not have been founded until much later if it was not for Christopher Columbus’s innovative thinking. We can all take a lesson from that as we go about our day and move on with our life. We need to think of ways to go around, above, or under the obstacles we face in our lives instead of always trying to go straight through them without weighing out our options. We, as human beings, can be as innovative as we want if we put our minds to it. 

The second great and probably most prominent characteristic of Christopher Columbus was his unbelievable persistence. Many times in Columbus’s life he was put down or told that he could not do something, yet he saw past the pessimists and accomplished his goal. There are many great and prime examples of this. One of these examples occurred when everyone told him that he would not find land if he sailed west. The general belief was that Columbus would die at sea. This being said Columbus stayed persistent and believed in his idea that he could sail west from Europe and find land. Another prime example occurred on Columbus’s first voyage to the new world. The date that the ship had calculated to arrive at had passed long ago so the crew on board of Columbus’s ship was very restless and decided to mutiny against Columbus. With mutiny at hand, Columbus persisted and kept sailing west. Finally, they found land and Columbus was saved. This was an absolute perfect example of Columbus staying persistent in his beliefs and the end result being a good one. In today’s society, people get down on themselves too fast and then do not follow through with their ideas. We need to be more like Christopher Columbus in the sense that we need to be as persistent in our ways like he was. If we stay persistent like Columbus was then there is no telling what great things lie in our future. I realize that being persistent is much easier said than done but people need to make a consciences effort to stay persistent in their ways. 

Columbus’s third awesome characteristic was his mental strength. Columbus’s mental strength was what got him through all of his life. He stayed mentally tough throughout all the criticism throughout his life. We can take a great lesson from this in many important ways. If we stay mentally tough trough our hardest and most difficult endeavors then our confidence will soar. We will also feed off of this and not let anything stop us from achieving our goals. For example, when a student sits down to study for a test he or she has two options. The first option is to study diligently even if there are more fun things to do or to not study and wander off and do something else. This is the point where a student or anyone in else in life must exhibit mental toughness and discipline to make themselves study. This is just one simple example that is on more of a small scale. Columbus’s decision were on much more a larger scale and sometimes he had to exhibit mental toughness in life or death situations. 

Finally, I feel like if we were all a bit more like Christopher Columbus than the world we live in would be a much better place. The three characteristics that I discussed are what separate the people who are remembered in history to those who are not. Hopefully, we will all follow in the footsteps of one of history’s greatest men.