Stick It Out – Cultivating Persistence

Persistence is a trait that is becoming lost in our world today. Despite hearing continual success stories about people who stuck it out and made it big, people these days are far more likely to take the path of least resistance when it comes to forming and achieving goals. But the persistence factor is the most important difference between success and failure, and is often the deciding factor between the two. If you’re serious about succeeding in the pursuit of your goals, then you need to be persistent in pursuing persistence. Here are a few ways that you can make persistence one of your best traits.

One of the most important factors behind the factor of persistence itself is motivation. If you’re motivated and excited about your goals, then it’ll be much easier to be persistent in pursuing them. What you really need to do is to imagine yourself achieving your goals. Think about how good it will feel when you finally have what you’ve been working so hard for. Let your desire for that great feeling motivate you to be persistent in your pursuit of this goal. Start by achieving one step at a time, and continue with steady progress towards your goal.

Don’t be too disappointed if you experience failure along the way. Remember that a battle lost doesn’t mean that the war is over. The persistence factor can help you to reframe failure and to see it as a learning experience, as opposed to seeing it as a sign that you shouldn’t continue. Learn to take failures with a grain of salt. Pick up any lessons to be learned and then move on towards your goal once more. Just because you failed once doesn’t mean that this endeavor will end in failure. In fact, if you continue to persevere, you’re proving that you’re more determined than ever.

When dancers learn to pirouette, they’re trained to fix their eyes to a spot on the wall and then whip their heads around to find that same spot. This technique helps them to keep their balance, and to have a frame of reference to come back to every time they turn. In the same way, it helps if you keep your eyes fixed to a vision of what it is you want from your goal. That will help you to maintain the persistence factor because it’ll help you to remember what it is exactly that you’re pursuing.

It’s good to remember that you should work smarter, not harder. Practicing the persistence factor doesn’t always mean putting everything you have into pursuing this goal, 24/7. Sometimes, you will need to rest on your journey towards your goal. But if you put systems in place so that time isn’t lost while you rest, you can reach your goal that much faster. Instead of wasting time trying to remember what steps you have left to achieve and what tasks you need to complete, make lists for yourself and enlist the help of others.