If there's one thing I like in life, it's a healthy dose of perseverance. Without it, nothing worthwhile can be achieved and it is all too easy to fritter away years of your life and end up with nothing to show for it.
Let me tell you about two of my friends - both are intelligent and capable people but both share a common fault. They cannot stick at anything for more than a few months!
Mark is in his late forties, had two young boys and a lovely wife but he is constantly bemoaning the fact that he cannot achieve his dream of having a career in entertainment and resents seeing other people succeeding where he has failed. The trouble is, he wants success now. He wants to be able to skip over the boring part of actually working his way through the ranks, so he is always chasing after 'his big break'......any chance of.which inevitably crumbles to dust time and time again.
Matt, on the other hand, is around 10 years younger and cannot stay in one job longer than 18 months before changing to another industry. He is seeking 'the perfect career' and one he feels will be right for him. He is convinced that if he could just find that perfect fit, Life will deliver amazing success right into his lap. Of course, what Matt fails to see is that his track record shows that he just gets bored easily and longs for a new challenge. With the constant chopping and changing, he never builds a solid work history so he's always starting over right from the bottom.
Both men simply cannot persevere through the tough and boring times and consequently fail to make any kind of headway towards the things they say they desire.
If you can recognize this kind of behavior as being familiar, maybe reading the article below will help open your mind to what you really need to do to achieve your dreams!
The Best Success Secret of All Time: Perseverance
I am a seeker. A seeker of answers. A seeker of what makes life really work and what doesn't. A seeker of the real keys to happiness and success. Like so many seekers before me I have read many great books, bought many amazing programs, participated in teleseminars, have been a part of wonderful training programs, and have hired some of the best business and personal coaches.
Through it all I have learned so many great techniques, skills, and methods that really have cracked some important and hard to crack codes. Codes such as what really is the key to happiness (answer: happiness comes from within and is a CHOICE available to everyone in any moment). As well as what is the meaning of life (answer: life really has no meaning, only the meaning YOU assign to it).
While all of the practical, spiritual, and metaphysical tools I have acquired have been invaluable to me and will continue to help me along my journey, the one thing that really stands out for me above all others- and this was a really tough choice to make- is that you have to believe that success is a WHEN not an IF. In other words, you have to PERSEVERE.
Perseverance really stands out for me as THE best secret for success. Why? Without it no one, and I mean absolutely no one would have achieved the success they were wanting in life, in any area whether business or personal. Think about it for a moment: what if you decided that after one bad relationship you were done with relationships altogether? You (and definitely I!) would not be with your soulmate right now or at least so much closer to finding him or her. What if you decided that owning your own business just wasn't for you and didn't even bother giving it a shot because you were so afraid to fail? You wouldn't be the youngest self-made female billionaire and creator of Spanx Sara Blakely who in an article for Forbes magazine had this to say about failure:
"Believe in your idea, trust your instincts, and don't be afraid to fail. It took me two years from the time I had the idea for Spanx until the time I had a product in hand ready to sell into stores. I must have heard the word "no" a thousand times. If you believe in your idea 100%, don't let anyone stop you! Not being afraid to fail is a key part of the success of Spanx."
One of the biggest components of perseverance is getting comfortable with the likelihood of failure because ask anyone who has set out to achieve a goal, especially a big one, and they (like Sara Blakely) will tell you that failure is actually a huge part of success. It is not failing that is bad; it is giving up, lacking perseverance that will kill a dream. As one of my personal favorite
self-development authors, Dr. Robert Anthony, will tell you "There is no such thing as failure, only feedback." When you look at failure in that way it allows you to interpret it in a much different, more productive way. It allows you to step back, look at what you were trying to achieve, re-evaluate some steps you took, and change course.
Just like when you type in the wrong address in your GPS which is now directing you to the wrong destination, all you have to do is figure out the right address, type that in, and now you're on your way to where you originally wanted to go. It doesn't mean you won't hit some traffic along the way which may slow your progression, just like challenges may slow your progression towards your goals, but it does mean that if you stick to the course and persevere you WILL get to where you want to go.
In my own life, perseverance has paid off big-time. As I said earlier if I had let one (or in my case way more than one!) bad relationship make me feel as if there was no one out there for me and had just given up on love altogether I wouldn't be with my amazing soulmate right now. Same thing in my career, and even finding the right house- which we did just two months ago and it's amazing!
So, when you're down and out, when you're feeling like you've tried it all and nothing has worked, when everyone is telling you it's time to quit, KEEP GOING. Don't quit now because success is probably right around the corner. But you don't have to take my word for it...
"Success is not final, failure is not fatal: it is the courage to continue that counts." Winston Churchill
Hi Jane,
ReplyDeleteI have been following you for a few weeks. This post is your best yet.