The Truth About Persistence and Success
If you really want to be successful, you probably spend a lot of
time reading motivational books and articles. You want to know
what qualities are required for success.
When we read about the tools required to achieve success, very
often we are told that if we really want to be successful, we
must have persistence.
Persistence is the quality of never giving up when we encounter
challenges. Of holding on to our dream. Of refusing to be
discouraged no matter what the odds, no matter what happens.
And when you read the life stories of very successful people,
they will often tell you about all the hardships they
encountered along the way. They will tell you about the
discouragement they occasionally felt when they encountered
failure, and about all the people who laughed at them along the
way.
And then they will often tell you that the reason they are
successful today is because they were persistent. They
perservered in chasing their dream, no matter what happened.
So if you have been facing a bit of discouragement while you
pursue your dream, reading these success gurus can give you the
boost you need to keep on doing what you've been doing. After
all, persistence is the key to success.
Almost everyone says so.
And all those people who encourage you to be persistent are
wrong!
Persistence can lead to certain failure if you do not apply
persistence in the right way.
Let me explain what these people are leaving out when they tell
you to be persistent.
Every day as I drive to work in the city where I live, I always
see a middle-aged blonde woman who paces back and forth on the
sidewalk in front of a big government building. She is always
carrying a big protest sign. She smiles and waves at all the
cars that pass.
I'm not sure exactly what her sign says because the words don't
really make any sense.
There seems to be something about an injustice that happened to
her when her husband's pension was divided up during their
divorce. And there's a few comments about a government
conspiracy to cover up the injustice that was done to her. I
guess what she's trying to accomplish with her protest is she's
trying to get this divorce decision changed.
Every day, no matter what the weather, this woman comes out to
walk back and forth for two hours in front of this government
building and wave at all the people. Her smile never fails.
After the first two hours of protesting are up, she goes to
another place downtown. She spends another two hours walking
back and forth, smiling and waving, in front of a different
building a few blocks away.
She has been doing this every day for at least seventeen years.
She is certainly persistent.
All that persistence and dedication for so many years does not
seem to be having any effect, but she does not seem to notice.
If seventeen years of her walking back and forth carrying this
sign hasn't had any effect, I don't think that one more day of
walking with this sign is going to change the outcome of her
divorce. But she is persistent in continuing her protest.
Probably every big city has a few people like this woman, people
you can see standing on the sidewalk. People who spends years
holding some sign that doesn't make sense.
These people can teach us all about the real value of
perserverence and persistence.
These people are certainly very persistent, but usually they are
not successful.
When success gurus tell us that persistence is an important
quality on the road to success, they are often leaving out
something important.
When successful people tell you that they got to where they are
today because they were persistent, they are actually leaving
out part of the story. A very important part of the story.
And the part that they are leaving out is this: They forget to
tell you that before they were persistent, they had a goal, and
they had a plan on how to get there.
And all along the way, after every step they took, they stepped
back to evaluate the results to see if the results they were
getting were the results they wanted. And if they weren't
getting the results they wanted, then they would change the
steps they took.
These successful people did have persistence, but they were only
persistent about holding on to their vision.
They were never persistent about the method they took to get to
their goal.
All along the way, they were prepared to be very flexible and
experiment to see what techniques and strategies worked best to
get where they wanted to go.
Why do so many successful people leave out this important detail
when they tell us the secrets to their success? Why do they so
often neglect to mention that if a strategy wasn't working, they
abandoned it quickly and moved on to another strategy?
I don't think that successful people deliberately leave out this
key information because they have a conspiracy to keep other
people from becoming as successful as they have been.
I think that successful people often leave out this key detail
because they assume it's very obvious to everyone already. They
assume that everyone already knows that you test each step of
what you are doing to see whether it's working or not. And if
it's not working, you change it. And you keep trying new
approaches til you get something that works, that gets you
closer to the result you want.
People who admire persistence often use the example of Thomas
Edison who kept trying to produce an electrical light bulb even
after ten thousand failed attempts.
But people often forget that while Thomas Edison was persistent
in believing in his goal, he was not persistent in the way he
tried to achieve it. Thomas Edison did not repeat the same
experiment over and over again ten thousand times.
Thomas Edison performed about ten thousand different experiments
on his way to trying to find a practical electrical light bulb.
Every time he tried an experiment to produce an electric light
bulb, he then backed up and took some time to evaluate the
results. He figured out what was working and what wasn't
working. Then he would try something different the next time.
And he would keep track of the results.
So, remember this crucial difference the next time someone tries
to tell you that persistence is the key to success.
Without taking some time to evaluate whether or not what you do
is actually working, you can be persistent for years, and not
achieve the goals you want.
So, if you want to be successful, be sure to hold on to your
dream, but remember to check frequently whether the actions you
are taking are getting you closer to your goals.