Persistency is a habit. People are not born with it, they build it with time. However, to build it you need some relative factors. You see, the truth is – life is hard. In fact, it is the strictest teacher who would not let go until you perfect yourself to the point where people will stand and stare at you with awe. It will drive you to the limit and will dig holes when you reach the limit. You would, in the end, either persist or perish. Yes, it is that difficult sometimes. Yet, in difficulties people learn – learn the value of being persistent.
It might take a few lines of persistent lecture to explain why persistency matters. So, put the car to the first gear and ponder, sometimes you need to slow down a little and take a deep breath, before hitting the fifth.
What is Persistency?
Persistency is Perfection
There are ample of examples of perfecting skills by sheer persistency. Arjun did not become the best archer of the world overnight. He worked and he worked hard. When everyone went to sleep, he stayed awake and practiced. When everyone played, he sat by his teacher and learnt. He stayed with the task. It became his life, the objective of being alive. In the end, he earned the right to be called the best archer of the world. Even today, thousands of years later, people still talk about Arjun the Epic Archer. You want perfection, you persist.
Persistency is Success
Yes, success does not just come. You need to make it come to you. To put in other way, you need to become worth the success you desire. You don’t attract your desire, you attract yourself to your life. If you take a closer look at the way your life has turned, you would find that at each turn, you have attracted people like yourself to your life. They had mirrored your fear, they had mirrored your thought. To earn success, you need to persist and become the success. Nothing else can get you there. Nothing else will teach you to grow like persistency would.
Bruce Lee had once said that – I fear not the man who has practiced 10,000 kicks once, but I fear the man who had practiced one kick 10,000 times.Practicing the same thing over and over again is being persistent. Nothing can take its place.
Persistency is Talent
Thousands of talents are born every day and thousands of talents die without making it. Only the ones who stick to it make it. Jack London was rejected more than six hundred times in his life. He had failed to get himself published. But, he stuck to it. He kept trying. Therefore, today his name is always mentioned when writing a motivational article. His persistent nature had earned him the honor. Talent is nothing without the desire to keep doing it again and again.
Persistency is Immortality
Yes, it is immortality. Maybe you would not be around to enjoy it, but, people will talk about you till the day earth revolves around the sun. Alexander the Great persisted and kept going even when his most trusted companions lost faith in him. He lost his sanity, his friends and in the end his life. But, till the last day he kept going. His empire fell not because there was no capable leader to take over the battle. His empire fell because no one else had the persistency and the will to die for their desire. To the strongest, he left his empire and till today the earth is awaiting the arrival of that leader.
How to have persistent focus is a tricky question. Before that question, arises another one – passion, do you have it? Do you spend sleepless nights visualizing yourself in a life beyond imagination? Do you feel fear while talking to others about your desire? Have you ever been laughed at for dreaming too big?
If, yes, my dear, you are already persistent. Only few people are out there who dare to make a difference. Only few people are out there who would take the road untraveled to reach their goals. Yet, you need to have a road map to acquire the kind of persistency which drove Alexander the Great to conquer the world. Yes, he died for it, but, then again no one is immune to death, right?
Keys to focus:
Make a Deadline
Yes, deadline is an amazing thing. Put a line where the race ends. Pick up a date from the calendar. If possible throw a dart at it. Make this date to finish up a part of your task. If you are writing your block buster novel, give yourself only this time to finish writing another chapter. Have a deadline and see the difference.
Be Realistic
Of course, sanity is what you need to succeed. Having unrealistic goals will only break your spirit. Everything is possible, but, you need to put a little method in the madness. One step at a time can make wonder. It is collecting one clue at a time to find the killer. Funny, but this is the truth.
Allow Yourself to Fail
Even the most experienced writer fail to deliver a block buster. It happens. Failure is the part of life which will forever walk down with you. If you fear failure you will not be able to persist in your path. You will quit after one lost battle. Instead, accept failure as a teacher. Learn from it as you move forward. If you have failed, why have you failed? If your article has been rejected, why it got rejected? Take a little time to ponder. The solution will come out in the open, if you give time and work hard with honesty.
Read About People Who Made it
Only someone who had been through immense struggle in life can tell the world – to stay hungry, stay foolish. Everyone has a story to tell. You must know the story before trying to write your own.
Lastly,
You really need to be hungry to keep going. If that hunger is not there, you will not succeed in pushing yourself forward when nothing is going right. Instead, you will be lured to the basic human desire for instant gratification such as sex, drugs , alcohol, excessive sleeping, excessive eating, laziness etc. This point we have already covered in our recent blog post “How to overcome bad habits”. So, stay hungry and keep learning.
