Creative Guidance-IASbaba, Inspirational & Educative Articles
Art of Persistence:
When everything else is equal, the key differentiating factor between success and failure is persistence. While most people persist for a while and give up, a few persist till they get what they want. Those few are the ones who eventually succeed in life. Persistence is what separates one individual from another.
So what exactly is persistence? How do you develop it? Where can you find it? Why is it that some people are naturally more persistent than others? Can one even develop persistence or is it just a quality one inherits from birth? Let us dive a little deeper into the art of persistence.
Firstly persistence is an entirely self-consciously developed ability. Nobody is born with unique abilities of persistence. In one sense, as kids we all were equally persistent. As a process of growing up, our ability to be persistent changes over time due to several external and internal factors.
External factors contributing to our levels of persistence are the environment we grow up in, the challenges we had to face and overcome our upbringing and education, friends and family etc. Internal factors include our ability to defer gratification, endure hardships, individuality, creativity etc.
When one begins to pay attention to his/her persistence levels, one can always assess its intensity and make changes accordingly to increase the levels of persistence. It simply doesn’t matter what kind of growing up conditioning you were subjected to. When you become conscious of your persistence levels, you can work on it and change it.
This is where one has to learn the fundamental principles of persistence. Persistence can be developed by simply pushing yourself to hold on to things a little longer every time. We all have our breaking points. We all have our “I am done with this now” moments. We all have our “ I cannot do this anymore” moments.
By recognizing fully that every time you decide to quit doing something, the reason for it will always be the mental pattern that you have been used to – when you quit has very little to do with physical and mental ability and has everything to do with what you are comfortable with. One of the best ways of improving your persistence levels is by accepting the uncomfortable feeling of staying with something longer than is necessary.
This might sound a little too simplistic a way to improve persistency, but try it and it always works. We give up a little too soon because we don’t want to put our minds and bodies in any uncomfortable position. This is the self defense mechanism of life. When you are able to recognize this and push yourself a little further, you will discover persistency levels that you could not have imagined. To know what you are capable of, you got to learn how to push yourself a little further, and the best way to do this is to be totally ok with the uncomfortable feeling of pushing yourself.
“This article is a part of the creative endeavor of Meditation Farm and IASBABA.”
