Perseverance is a powerful concept. All of us have used perseverance at least once in our lives to help us achieve something that we truly wanted deep in our hearts. Unfortunately, for most people, including myself, as much as we intellectually understand what perseverance means, what it requires, and what it can deliver in our lives, we don’t always let it do its work.
Perseverance works every single time, if we let it work. Perseverance requires no natural ability. Perseverance can never fail. Perseverance is available to every single person. Perseverance can help all of us create any outcome we would like. All of those statements are true. That being the case, why aren’t we all living the lives we are created for? Simple, we don’t let perseverance do its work. I need you to understand this idea very clearly; when you start in the process of creating any result you want, there are only two possible outcomes. You will either achieve it, or you will give up.
People believe that the two outcomes possible with any aspiration are success or failure. However, there is no failure if you persevere. There are lessons, modifications, and different approaches, but if you keep going, there is no failure, only the outcome you desire. The condition is that you allow perseverance to do its work. The definition of perseverance from a well-known online dictionary: continued effort to do or achieve something, even when this is difficult or takes a long time.
Perseverance is our servant, our employee, and our greatest ally. However, no servant, employee, or ally can help if you don’t let them work. In addition to that, all employees need certain things provided for them to work well; trust, training, purpose, and compensation. So, what does perseverance really need to work well? Simple; time, effort, perspective, and patience.
There is no way I would have ever played professional football if I hadn’t let perseverance do its work. It was 20 months between my first and second senior games of professional football. The only way I made it through all the rejection, heartbreak, doubt, fear, anger, frustration, and temptation to give up, was perseverance. I let it work, and it worked. It was that second game of professional sport which really started my career.
There is no way I would be the author of almost ten books today if I hadn’t let perseverance do its work. Over twenty years ago, I was working seven days per week in two businesses, and in almost $100,000 debt when I made a random decision to write a book. I believed it would be the ticket to help me live a life of meaning, joy, and abundance. I had no idea how to write a book, I had minimal time, and really didn’t know how long the process would take. Without letting perseverance do its work, I would not have survived the day-after-day struggle to find time, to believe I could write a book that would make any kind of difference in the world, or to find a publisher. Then after two years, with a publisher, I required more perseverance to see if it would sell and do what I needed to do to make it successful.
What perseverance delivered was beyond my imagination. Four years after starting this process, with no idea what I was doing, with just faith and allowing perseverance to do its work, I was able to retire from an 80-hour per week personal training career and get out of debt. All from the decision to write a book and allowing perseverance to do its work. Perseverance is the most powerful tool we all have, as long as we let it do its work.
It’s not all sunshine and roses, as I wish the same could be said for many other areas of my life where I didn’t let perseverance do its work. I gave up on playing the guitar far too soon when I was younger, and it’s something I regret today. I have lost many relationships because I didn’t allow perseverance to do its work in terms of building strong connections. Even today, as I am going through some challenges in my life, I am tempted to find a quick-fix and reaction-based answer, when the only way through is to let perseverance do its work.
I think I have made my point loud and clear. So, all I will ask you is, what area of your life do you know would be better, as you would like, if you just let perseverance do its work? I will leave you with that thought. To help, I would encourage you to listen to my podcasts from this week; When I stop fighting, with Daryl Dittmer, and The brain revolution, with Dominika Staniewicz. It works every time, and it will deliver everything you want, so, this week, why not just let perseverance do its work.