Royane Real

By Royane Real

Author of “How You Can Be Smarter - Use Your Brain to Learn Faster, Remember Better and Be More Creative”  available at http://www.lulu.com/real

If you want to be successful in life, most people will tell you that to be a success, you have to be persistent.  You can’t give up.

You have to persevere. 

The word persistent means that we keep on doing what we’re doing.  We don’t give up just because things aren’t working out.  We hold on to our dream, no matter what happens.

Success gurus and well meaning friends and family will tell you that if you want to amount to anything, you have to keep on trying.  Perservere.  You have to keep plugging away at trying to accomplish your goals, no matter how difficult it sometimes seems.  And never, never give up.

We are often told that persistence and perseverance will eventually lead to success, while we are told that giving up will lead to failure.

And unfortunately, all those people who tell you to be persistent are wrong!

In fact, being persistent can sometimes guarantee that you will fail!

Let me explain the big mistake people are making when they tell you that you have to be persistent if you want to be successful.

In the city where I live, there is a woman who is the most persistent person I have ever seen.

Every day for over eighteen years, she has dressed up and taken her place in front of a government building downtown.  And every day she has spent hours walking back and forth in front of this building carrying a big protest sign.  She waves at every car that passes by.  She smiles at every pedestrian and hands out pamphlets.  Many of the drivers who pass her honk and wave.  A lot of people laugh at her.

But this woman is never discouraged.  She always looks very cheerful and happy.

I don’t know exactly what this woman is protesting or trying to do, because the words on the sign she is carrying don’t make sense.

She seems to be protesting some injustice or other that happened to her in her divorce eighteen years ago.  Whatever it is that she is protesting, you can’t really figure it out  from the sign she is carrying.  The pamphlets that she hands out don’t make any sense either. 

Eighteen years of doing the same thing certainly shows that she is persistent. And even though all that persistence doesn’t seem to be working, this woman does not seem to notice.  She keeps on doing what she’s doing.

I’m sure that every city in the world has a few people who are like this woman.  People who spend years of their lives holding up a sign that doesn’t make any sense. 

It is these people who can teach us the true value of persistence and perseverance.

Why?  Because although many of these people are amazingly persistent, they are rarely successful in achieving what they want.

If persistence really was the most important quality that people needed in order to achieve their goals, then these people should be amazingly successful.  But they are not.  Why not?

Because they are leaving out a very important part of the success equation. Without this important quality, all their persistence keeps them on the road to failure.

Here is the very important information about persistence that success gurus often don’t tell you. 

They forget to tell you that before they were persistent, they had a goal, and they had a plan on how to get there. 

And all along the way, after every step they took, they stepped back to evaluate their  results to see if the results they were getting were the results they wanted.  If they weren’t getting the results they wanted, then they would change the steps they took.

They didn’t keep doing what wasn’t working.  They kept looking for what would work.

People often use the example of Thomas Edison, the inventor of the electric light bulb, as a great example of persistence and perserverance.

After all, Thomas Edison tried over ten thousand experiments on his way to inventing the electric light bulb.

It’s true that Thomas Edison was persistent in believing in his goal of creating the electric light bulb.  But he wasn’t persistent in the way he tried to achieve it.

Thomas Edison didn’t repeat the same experiment over and over again, ten thousand times in a row.  

What Thomas Edison did was that he performed ten thousand different experiments when he was trying to develop the electric light bulb.

He was persistent about achieving his end goal, but he was willing to be very flexible about how he got there.

Each time Thomas Edison completed an experiment that failed, he did not beat himself up over his failure.  He did not persist in the same failed method to get to his goal.

What he did was that he backed up and evaluated each attempt.

He looked at what went wrong and what went right.  He tried to figure out what might work better the next time.  He kept track of his results.  He made a new plan.

So Thomas Edison never felt like he had failed ten thousand times.  He believed that there was a way to invent a practical electric light bulb, and he discovered ten thousand ways that didn’t work.  He was trying to find the new way that would work, and eventually he did.

So, always remember that persistence by itself is not enough.

When successful people are persistent, what they are persistent about is holding on to their end goal.

But they are very flexible about which road they take to get to that goal.  They spend a lot of time evaluating whether or not what they are currently doing is taking them closer to their goals.

They don’t let themselves stay stuck in ways that don’t work.  They look at their failed attempts to see what lessons their failures can show them.

If you really want to achieve your goals, you have to always take some time to evaluate whether the particular path you are on will get you there or not.  Be flexible in choosing the road you take to get there.

If you don’t step back and evaluate, you can be persistent for years, and end up being just as far away from achieving success as you were when you started.

If you want to be successful in achieving your goals, be sure to hold on to your dreams.  But, be sure to check frequently whether or not you are on the right path to getting there.

This article about the true role of persistence in achieving success was written by Royane Real.  For more ideas and tips that will improve your life, sign up now for my free, no obligation newsletter and get helpful life improvement advice delivered to your mailbox every two weeks!

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