No matter what you want to achieve in life, if you want to produce outstanding success, you need to develop persistence. Without persistence, there is no way you can achieve your goals and create the success you desire.
It’s only those who are persistent and willing to study things deeply, who achieve the master work.
Paulo Coelho
Jim loved acting and he dreamed about becoming a successful comedy actor one day. His first comic stand-up performance was at Yuk Yuk’s Comedy Club in Toronto. But when Jim presented his impersonations, he was booed off the stage. Jim also went to for an audition for Saturday Night Live, but he was rejected.
Despite all the failures Jim went through, he didn’t give up on his passion to make people laugh. Jim was persistent with his dreams of becoming one of the world’s highest-paid actors and comedians. And due to his persistence, he succeeded. His name is Jim Carrey.
I bet you have heard about the story of how J.K. Rowling persisted with her dream as a writer and succeeded as the first billionaire author for the groundbreaking storybooks, Harry Potter.
It wasn’t an easy journey for Rowling. She has to face the devastating death of her mother, moved and started a new life in Portugal, got married, and then divorced just after 13 months later, lived in a cramped apartment with her daughter, and lived on government welfare.
From the inception of the idea for her storybook, it took her 6 years to complete the book.
Think about it, most people would have given up, but not J.K. Rowling. She persisted with her dream, transformed it into a goal, worked on it, and eventually, her dream came true.
I can go on and on with successful people who have accomplished extraordinary results in life because of their persistence, but it is not about them, it is about you.
Are you persistent enough to pursue what you want until you get it?
Persistence is one of the most essential and most common characteristics shared by all successful people.
Therefore, if you want to achieve your goals, turn your dreams into reality, and live the successful life you dream about, learn to develop persistence. Here are a couple of ways to grow your persistence…
1. Understand Your Purpose
Why do you do what do you? Why do you want to pursue your goals? Why do you want to achieve your dreams?
Your purpose says it all. When you have a strong reason behind why you do what you do, you will stick to it despite all odds.
However, when your purpose is weak, you will quickly give up whenever you face difficulties in the journey.
Think about it, if someone puts a gun on your head and forces you to write a book, how will you feel?
Well, you will finish the book because if you don’t, he will pull the trigger and you’ll be dead.
But you’ll never do the work with your full heart because you were forced to do it in the first place. You’ll feel stressed and worried.
Now, what if you willingly commit to writing the book? Nobody forces you, but you do it because you love writing and you dream about becoming a great author someday?
You’ll feel different. Imagine every day, you are working and getting closer toward your dream, and you feel good about it. You do it because you want to, not because you have to.
It makes all the difference, eh?
This is what happens when you have a strong and emotional purpose behind what you do.
Thus, understand your purpose. Know why you do what you do.
If you want to develop persistence and stick to your plan, you need to have a strong, emotional, and empowering purpose to support you.
Read: Why Clarity of Purpose is Important to Success and How to Get It
2. Redefine Your Meaning
Besides purpose, the meaning you associate with your goal will influence your level of persistence too.
Here’s an example. If you are in sales and you want to double your sales, but you deep within you, you believe that salespeople are bad people who lie, then trust me, you will not do good in sales.
The meaning you give your goals or work will greatly impact your performance and persistence.
People quit because they don’t find what they do meaningful. People who persist are people who see what they do as meaningful. And that’s why they continue to work on it and persist on even if things are hard.
Remember the story of the 3 bricklayers? One bricklayer looks at his job as laying bricks, another looks at it as building a wall, and the last bricklayer looks at his job as building a beautiful home.
If you are a bricklayer and you look at your job as simply laying bricks, you will quit whenever there is another opportunity. You will be distracted by other “shiny objects” and quickly give up what you do.
But when you look at your job as something meaningful, you will persist until you get it done.
The same goes for your goals and everything you want to achieve in life. You need to associate what you want with a strong meaning.
Without an empowering meaning, you will quit and give up. But when you find what you do or your goal to be meaningful, you will persist until you achieve it.
Read: What is The Real Meaning of Success in Life? And How to Define It
3. 10X Your Commitment
So, you want to develop your persistence? Then just 10X your commitment.
The more committed you are, the less likely you’re going to quit and give up. But, how do you boost your commitment?
Burn the ships. Leave yourself with no other options but to succeed. Give yourself no excuses so that your only way is to press on and persist until you succeed.
You can create a commitment device or make a public commitment so that you will hold yourself accountable.
For instance, get an accountability partner and update your progress with him or her every week. Commit to your partner that you will send him/her a progress report by the end of every week on your goal.
This is one of the many ways how you can increase your commitment and become more persistent.
Another powerful method is to use a commitment device – a way of locking yourself into a desired action/behavior so that you will follow through.
Here are some examples of how a commitment device works:
- When you hit your goal, you get to enjoy an hour of a movie, but when you don’t, you have to donate $20 to charity.
- To exercise more: Choose to live somewhere that will force you to walk/bike more.
- To save more: Use a piggy bank where you can’t open it unless you break it open.
- To invest more: Set up an automatic investment account where a portion of your salary will be invested on autopilot.
- To watch less TV: Sell off the TV or keep the remote control away and lock it in a drawer.
You get the idea. The more committed you are, the more persistence you will be. Here’s a good guide you should read about commitment device.
4. Double the Fun
So, you want to be persistent? Then double the fun of doing the work.
Ever wonder why some people are driven to play golf and they can wake up at 5 AM and drive an hour to the golf course for the game?
But when it comes to doing something that they dislike, like writing a report, they will tell you that they feel sleepy, lethargic, and have no motivation to do it?
The reason is that they are not looking forward to doing it. To them, golf is fun, but writing a report is boring.
Hence, find a way to make what you do fun. When something is fun for you, you will persist in doing it.
Think about playing computer games. People are willing to spend hours to beat the game because it is fun.
5. Focus on the Possibility
Next, think about the possibility. If you want to be persistent, you need to focus on what’s possible and not what’s impossible.
When you see the possibility, you tend to become positive and optimistic. You will then proceed to do the work instead of giving up.
Most people give up because they lose hope and they don’t see how they can succeed if they continue.
Successful people are extremely positive. They focus on the possibility rather than the impossibility. They think about the results they want rather than the problems they are facing.
When you change your mind and focus on what’s possible, you become more persistent.
6. Take a Break
Sometimes, you need to take a rest and have a break. Your willpower works like your phone’s battery. Whenever it is low, your tendency to give up and procrastinate increases.
The good news is that you can recharge your willpower and motivation by taking short breaks and getting a rest.
You recharge your phone every day, don’t you? So, why not do that to yourself?
When your willpower is high, you can persist through and work on your goals.
Read: The Importance of Taking a Short Break According to Research
7. Reward Yourself
When was the last time you reward yourself? It can work as a commitment device, once you have completed a task, reward yourself.
You want to make the task rewarding so that you will persist through and get the work done.
So, brainstorm with a couple of ways how you can reward yourself. And every time you persist and get a task done, give yourself the appropriate reward.
There are many ways you can reward yourself, but make sure you do it the right way.
For example, if your goal is to lose weight and you persist in finishing a half marathon, don’t reward yourself with food. There is no point to exercise to lose weight and then rewarding yourself with delicious ice-cream.
Read: How to Reward Yourself for Your Hard Work and Effort
8. Build a Supportive Influence
Do you know that the surroundings you’re in can influence your level of persistence? Not only that, but the people you spend time with can also impact you too.
Imagine you are working out with a group of people who lack discipline and easily give up. When you’re exhausted, they may tell you to stop and give up. But if you are working out with people like Arnold Schwarzenegger, I bet he will inspire and motivate you to push forward.
Hence, who you mix with can influence your characteristic, and that includes your persistence.
Plus, your surroundings are important too. If you want to write a book, you don’t want to write it in a distracting environment where it will quickly drain your willpower and decrease your persistence.
You want to work in a surrounding that supports you and your goals. Set yourself up to win. Make a supportive environment so you will persist and push forward.
And make friends with people who possessed success characteristics.
Read: 9 Tips How to Change Your Environment for Greater Motivation
9. Introduce the Right Amount of Stress
Too much stress and make you quit and give up. And too little stress makes it no challenge. But with the right amount of stress, you will feel motivated and wanted to do the work and take up the challenge.
Just like the Goldilocks’ Rule suggests, you want to introduce the right amount of challenge with the things you do.
For example, you don’t want to set an easy goal where you don’t feel driven to achieve. At the same time, you don’t want to set a goal that is too far out of your capability that you feel overwhelmed by it.
You want to make the challenge just right.
According to the Yerkes-Dodson Law:
performance increases with physiological or mental arousal (stress) but only up to a point. When the level of stress becomes too high, performance decreases.
Hence, depending on the task/goal, you may want to make it more difficult or easier so that you will be driven to work on it.
The more you feel challenged and mentally aroused by the goal, the more you will persist and get it done.
Conclusion
Persistence is important. And your level of persistence works like your muscle, you can train and develop it. You can use the tips above to develop your persistence to never quit on your goals.
Do you find these tips useful? Let me know in the comment section below.