How to be More Persistent with Your Goals, Dreams, and Success

It’s clear, if you want to achieve your goals, live your dreams, and produce the extraordinary results you desire in life, you need to be persistent.

No matter what industry you look at, people who succeeded and became the specialists or experts in their field have displayed incredible persistence.

Thomas Edison was famously known for his 10,000 failures on his journey inventing the light-bulb, but he didn’t quit. Edison was passionate and persistent.

Edison continued his experiment and eventually found a way in inventing light-bulb that has since revolutionized the way we live.

Michael Jordan didn’t make it to his high school basketball team when he was young. He was told he was “not good enough”.

But that didn’t stop the young Jordan from pursuing his goal and dream. Jordan worked hard and persisted with what he wanted. Eventually, he became one of the most successful basketball players of all time.

And in the business world, we often heard successful people who made it because they persisted even when all the odds are going against them.

People like Steve Jobs who started Apple, Elon Musk who created Tesla and SpaceX, Richard Branson of the Virgin Group, Arianna Huffington who founded Huffington Post, and much, much more.

These people are amazing people who have “Pitbull persistence” in achieving what they want.

He was jailed for 27 years but he persisted with his mission

“Do not judge me by my successes, judge me by how many times I fell down and got back up.”

This is one of the famous quotes from Nelson Mandela, the man who was put behind bars for 27 years, yet, he didn’t give up on his mission.

In 1956, Mandela was arrested for high treason. And one year after that, he was thrown into jail due to the “conspiracy to overthrow the state”. All in all, he spent 27 years in jail.

But did he give up? No, Mandela persisted with his mission to end the apartheid political system.

Even when he was in prison, he fought to improve the living conditions for other prisoners and took part in hunger strikes.

While in prison, Mandela continued to study law and started to write his own autobiography. Many political figures around the world visited him in the prison and then they started the “Free Mandela” campaign.

After 27 years of grueling and struggles, Mandela was finally released and able to walk free in his country.

In 1994, Nelson Mandela was elected as the first black President of South Africa. Even then, he continued with his mission and persisted with his fight for freedom, both locally and internationally, until he stepped down in 1997.

How persistent are you with your goals and dreams?

Can you be like Mandela? Can you still persist with your goals and dreams if you were to put into jail? Can you work on your mission and pursue what you want even after struggling for 27 years?

This is the kind of persistence we all need to develop if we want to achieve extraordinary success in life.

It may not be easy, but it doesn’t need to be as difficult and gruesome as what Mandela has gone through either.

The key is to learn to develop your persistence with what you want. As what Mandela said:

“The greatest glory in living lies not in never falling, but in rising every time we fall.”

Hence, learn to build the characteristic of never give up. Develop the skill to persist on no matter what happens.

How to be Persistent with Your Goals and Dreams

Now that you know it is important to persist with what you want if you seriously want to achieve it but, how do you develop your persistence exactly?

Here are a few methods of how you can do it…

1. Align your passion with persistence

First, align your passion with the things you want to persist. Without passion, you can never persist on the things that you want.

No matter what goals or dreams you want to achieve, you need to develop the passion for them.

Look at successful people like Steve Jobs, Elon Musk, or even Nelson Mandela, they are absolutely passionate for the mission they are trying to pursue.

Jobs love design and simplicity. He believed in creating beautiful products that change lives. Mandela believed in freedom and against racism. Elon Musk is passionate about electric vehicles and space travel.

If you want to be persistence in something, you must first develop a passion for it.

As what Steve Jobs once said in an interview, without passion, people will give up. This is because the success of achieving extraordinary results is difficult. And if you don’t have the passion, you will quit.

Those who choose to continue to pursue their mission are the ones that are passionate with it. This is why they continue to hustle because they love doing it.

2. Focus on an impactful vision

In his best-selling book, Give and Take, professor Adam Grant wrote that one factor that drives people to achieve their goals is significance.

In other words, when you are making an impact on other people’s lives, you will be more motivated to do it.

You need to look at your goals and dreams as serving and helping others. When you know you are making a positive impact on the world and other people’s lives, you tend to be more driven.

Therefore, create an impactful vision and focus on it. As you work on your goals, help and serve as many people as possible.

As what Grant shared in his book, givers are usually the most successful people in the world. This is because they constantly focusing on giving and helping others, in return, others will want to help and support them back.

So, ask yourself, how can you leave a positive impact as you pursue your goals and dreams?

When you know that you are making the world a better place and are helping others live a better life, you will be more driven. As a result, be more persistent.

3. Do it with other people

There is no way you can achieve success without the help of others. You can’t succeed alone.

There is no such thing as a self-made man. You need help from others in order to get to greater heights and accomplishments.

Plus, when you do it together with someone else, you can encourage each other when needed. This is why almost every successful business in the world started with a group of people, not a lone ranger.

Walt Disney started his journey with his brother, Roy Disney.

Steve Jobs started Apple Computer with his good friend, Steve Wozniak.

Elon Musk co-founded Zip2 with Kimbal Musk, his brother, which was then sold to Compaq Computer in 1999.

As you can see, you need help and support from others if you want to achieve great success in life. You can’t do it all by yourself.

When you have someone to support you, you tend to be more persistent because you know there’s someone behind you who will support, encourage, and go through the thick and thin together with you.

Conclusion

Persistence is one of the most important keys to success in life. No matter what goals and dreams you seek, you need to develop the persistence in order to hustle through the difficulties and setbacks.

The journey of success isn’t going to be easy. This is why you need to be persistent with what you want. Without persistence, you will give up faster than you imagine.