My focus this week has been on the subject of persistence.
All those runners with persistence! All those persistent people. I watched the highlights of the London marathon last Sunday evening and wished I was there. I love the event and have run it many times before as you regular readers know.
All those thousands of runners, that all trained and trained and then ran and ran. They had to be persistent, they had to have persistence to get to the start line, let alone finish the race.
Persistence is an essential skill in your
personal and professional life, since any major goal (and successful accomplishment of that goal) is bound to encounter an obstacle or two along the way.
If these obstacles prevent us from achieving our goals, we might start referring to them as failures.
“No great achievement is possible without persistent work” – Bertrand Russell
When I first started my own business, I remember
the local business link course that I attended for free telling me that 95% of businesses failed within 3 years.
Last year, a Bloomberg study revealed that nowadays 80% of businesses fail within 18 months! We don’t know that so many businesses do definitely fail, or that so many give up within 18 months.
I think many people get close, but do not persist enough, they are not prepared to do the ‘grind’ as motivational speaker Eric Thomas would refer to it.
For anything to become a success, persistence is essential. We’ve heard all the motivational tales about persistence of historical figures, haven’t we? People who just would not give up.
In fact, nearly every successful person in history has displayed incredible persistence.
Thomas Edison famously made 10,000 prototypes (though it may have been anything from 1000, to 20 million according to the variety of ways I’ve heard his story told) before making the first light bulb.
Nelson Mandela campaigned for 50 years including 27 years in prison before finally freeing his country.
Arianna Huffington struggled in writing for decades before finally the Huffington Post became a best-selling news website.
Many famous figures of varying backgrounds, from Abraham Lincoln to Colonel Sanders, all
were fine examples of being brilliantly persistent.
We remember these people for changing the world, freeing their country or creating a delicious chicken flavouring! We rarely associate them first and foremost with being persistent.
Studies have even proven that in some cases persistence alone can be the sole driver of performance.
A recent piece of research shows that students achieved exactly the same scores whether they were
taught online or by highly qualified teachers as long as they persisted in completing the course!
Persistence is one of the main things that can overcome and avert failure.
“The most interesting thing about a postage stamp is the persistence with which it sticks to its job” – Napoleon Hill.
9 Ways To Be More Persistent
Using Self-Hypnosis To Increase Your Persistence
Then also, of course, I wrote a full-blown self-hypnosis process for you to engage in and use to really advance your persistence.
