Perseverance and failure cannot coexist.  Failure happens when you quit.  When all is said and done, perseverance, commonly referred to as “stick-to-itiveness,” is the ultimate success insurance.  Nothing can take its place.

Like the old adage of getting up just one more time than you have been knocked down, “Staying with it” applies to so much that is good and healthful in life!  From learning to walk to riding a bicycle, our childhood teaches us that failure only occurs when we stop trying.  It’s a lesson many of us need to revisit in our adulthood.  Then we need to consciously apply the techniques and principles that keep us on the “perseverance track.”

For example, the world is full of those who “tried” to get a business going.  After meeting with difficulty or rejections, they quit.  They accepted failure, and faded back into the crowd never to be heard from again.  The worst part is not that they quit their business, but that they quit themselves.

Why should succeeding at a business be easier than learning to ski or to play the piano?  We are likely to stumble at first. It’s part of the learning process.  Ultimately, the people who persevere through the stumbling process learn enough to become successful.  It’s “staying with it” that separates the successful from the “wanes.”  Remember the words of Vince Lombardi, “We never lost a game, we just ran out of time.”

“Perseverance is the insurance policy and common denominator for success.  So powerful is perseverance that failure cannot exist in its presence.  As Edison observed when after thousands of efforts to make the electric light bulb produced no illumination, “I haven’t failed.  I’ve identified 10,000 ways this doesn’t work.”  By accurately viewing it as a learning experience, eventually Edison succeeded , leaving the critics and nay-sayers one of mankind’s most important inventions.

Charles Schulz, Arnold Schwarzenegger, Colonel Sanders, Thomas Edison, Ayn Rand and the endless list of other persistent great achievers found that success inevitably arrives for every person who perseveres.  Learn from the people who did it:  Let perseverance keep your goals alive.  And your dreams real.

Do what you love to do.  Stand up for what you believe in.  Make it a part of your life.  Work toward it every day.  Remember with every “No” you are that much closer to a “Yes.”  And by learning from each defeat and staying the course, success is inevitable.

These are people who persevered despite handicaps and disabilities:

• Beethoven (composer) – was deaf
• Ray Charles (musician) – is blind
• Thomas Edison (inventor) – had a learning problem
• Albert Einstein (scientist) – had a learning disability
• Terry Fox (runner) – is an amputee with cancer
• Stevie Wonder (musician) – is blind
• James Earl Jones (actor) – was a stutterer
• Helen Keller (author) – was deaf and blind
• Franklin D. Roosevelt (president) – was paralyzed from polio
• Vincent Van Gogh (artist) – was mentally ill
• Woodrow Wilson (president) – had a learning problem
• Itzhak Perlman (concern violinist) – was paralyzed from waist down

Thought for the Day:

“Perseverance is the hard work you do after you get tired of doing the hard work you already did.”  –Newt Gingrich

“Our greatest glory is not in never failing, but in rising up every time we fail.”                –Ralph Waldo Emerson