There is a secret ingredient that successful people have, and others lack, or don’t use. This ingredient is a personality trait. One that you can learn if you are not in posession of it already. And train if it is not yet at the level it should be.
Thomas A. Edison
When Edison was trying to perfect the incandescent light, he ran into a problem. He didn’t know which gas to put into the bulb. But he never gave up … he tried 10.000 different gases. None solve the problem.
Yet, he still didn’t give up. Instead he tried a vacuum, which turned out to be the solution to his problem!
Persistence
Every person who is successful at what they do, is persistent. Persistence is the personality trait you must have to succeed. Since success is only the last step of a long process which includes many temporary defeats.
Luck has nothing to do with it!
In the media you never hear the true story about success. Since success sells, the story of the many temporary defeats people have suffered is rarely given more than 2 lines in a complete cover story. This makes it look easy, or may even cause the reader to think that the successful person was just lucky.
In reality, successful people may be lucky, but it isn’t luck which causes success. It is the persistence those people have when everything seems to be going wrong, which causes them to be successful.
Learning and training persistence
If you want to learn persistence, or train it, there are many exercises you can do. Basically, they all amount to the same simple process:
- Find an activity or task of your choice
- Determine the edge of your comfort zone
- Plan the activity/task in such a way that the goal takes you over the edge of your comfort zone
For example, I like hiking. If I want to use this activity to improve my persistence, I can plan a hike which takes me through terrain which is slightly out of my comfort zone. For me that would be cold environments which means ploughing through snow fields.
If I plan such an activity it means that I can mentally prepare for it. Nonetheless, I will still have to show persistence not to quit after a day or 2 of hiking, because I don’t like the snow or the cold.
I bet you can find an activity that you can use to apply this very simple principle. You can even do this with changing a fosset in your house (if you’re not the DIY type of person for example), as long as it means you have to show persistence.
The most important thing: make a deal with yourself that you won’t give up until you’ve completed your goal. If you have to get creative, call in the neighbour, wait a long time, whatever. As long as you reach your goal and don’t give up!
Wed, Aug 11, 2010
Becoming Successful, Self Improvement