If you really want to be successful, you probably spend a lot of time reading motivational books and articles. You want to know what qualities are required for success.
When we read about the tools required for success, we are very often told that if we really want to be successful, we must have perseverance.
Perseverance is the quality of never giving up when we encounter challenges. To hold on to our dream. That you do not get discouraged no matter what the odds are, no matter what happens.
If you read the life stories of very successful people, they will often tell you about all the difficulties they faced along the way. They will tell you about the discouragement they occasionally felt when they failed, and about all the people who laughed at them along the way.
And then they will often tell you that the reason they are so successful today is because they were persistent. They persevered in pursuing their dream, no matter what.
So if you are feeling a little discouraged as you pursue your dream, reading about these success gurus can give you the boost you need to keep going as you are. After all, persistence is the key to success.
That's what almost everyone says.
And all those people encouraging you to be persistent are wrong!
Persistence can lead to certain failure if you do not apply it in the right way.
Let me explain what these people leave out when they tell you to be persistent.
Every day when I drive to work in the city where I live, I always see a middle-aged blonde woman walking back and forth on the sidewalk in front of a large government building. She always carries a large protest sign. She smiles and waves at all the cars that pass by.
I am not sure what her sign says because the words do not really make sense.
It seems to be about an injustice that happened to her when her husband's pension was divided in the divorce. And there are a few comments about a government conspiracy to cover up the injustice done to her. I suspect she is protesting to get the divorce decision changed.
Every day, no matter what the weather, this woman walks back and forth in front of the government building for two hours, waving to everyone. Her smile never fails.
After the first two hours of protesting are over, she walks to another downtown square. She spends another two hours smiling and waving back and forth in front of another building a few blocks away.
She has done this every day for at least seventeen years.
She is truly persistent.
All this persistence and dedication over so many years seems to have no effect, but she does not seem to notice.
If she has gone back and forth with this sign for seventeen years and accomplished nothing, I do not think one more day with this sign will change the outcome of her divorce. But she is persistent and continues her protest.
There are probably a few people like this woman in every big city, people you see standing on the sidewalk. People who hold a sign for years that makes no sense.
From these people we can all learn something about the true value of persistence and perseverance.
These people are certainly very persistent, but they are not usually successful.
When success gurus tell us that persistence is an important trait on the road to success, they often leave out something important.
When successful people tell us that they only got this far because they were persistent, they are leaving out part of the story. A very important part of the story.
And the part they leave out is this: they forget to tell you that before they were persistent, they had a goal and a plan for how to get there.
And along the way, after every step they took, they reviewed the results to see if the results they were getting were the ones they wanted. And if they did not get the results they wanted, then they changed the steps they took.
These successful people were persistent, but they only stuck to their vision.
They were never persistent about the method they used to achieve their goal.
All along the way, they were willing to be very flexible and experiment to find out which techniques and strategies worked best to achieve their goal.
Why do so many successful people leave out this important detail when they tell us the secrets of their success? Why do they so often fail to mention that they quickly abandoned a strategy that did not work and switched to another strategy?
I do not believe that successful people intentionally omit this key information because they have a conspiracy to keep other people from becoming as successful as they are.
I believe that successful people often leave out this important detail because
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