Persistence

You can accomplish anything that you really really want to do. However, if what you want to do has never been done before or has been done by very few, you may need to focus every ounce of effort in your entire being for a long period of time before you achieve success. How many times have you started towards a goal and given up at the first signs of failure? Or maybe you managed to get past the first obstacle or two but by the fifth or sixth you just throw in the towel.

How many professional athletes sink every shot, score every time or win every game? Which ones have a 100% success rate? None of them. Take for instance an example from basketball. A field goal percentage of 50% is considered good. That means a player can miss half the time they take a shot and it is still a good thing. What about baseball?  A batting average of .300 is considered very good.

Now hold on a second. That means seven out of ten times at bat they strike out. Their failure rate is more than twice their success rate and they are still doing better than many other players out there.

What do you think would happen to the baseball player who struck out his first six or seven at bats and then said to his coach "hey man, this is too hard. I don't think I can do this" ? If he walked away from the game right then, he would be a failure as a baseball player. But if he just persisted through a few more attempts he would achieve his goal.

American inventor Thomas Edison often went through thousands of experiments before achieving his intended goal. If he had given up after the 1st or the tenth or even the thousandth time that he did not succeed, our modern world would be a much different place. There would probably be no electric lights and no movie theaters at the very least.

Edison though did not see any of those experiments as failures. He said he just found a whole lot of ways not to do what he was attempting to do. And each time he would change some minor thing and try again. He did not give up until he reached his goal even when other people told him he was crazy or wasting his time.

If you want to be successful in your endeavors, you get to model his behavior in your life. First decide what it is that you want. Then formulate an action plan designed to achieve that which you want. Then put the plan in motion. As things proceed challenges, breakdowns and obstacles will occur. This is natural. Nothing worth doing is easy and it is not possible for you to foresee all of the difficulties that will arise ahead of time. Do not get discouraged and quit. The key is to work through each issue one by one, molding your plan to fit the circumstances as necessary until you arrive at your goal.

Persistence leads to success. Lack of persistence guarantees failure.