CAREER & MONEY
Persistent or Resilient?
By Donald Broughton
T
homas Edison was the Steve Jobs of his day. He founded a
company that we now call GE (General Electric). He invented
the recording industry, the motion picture industry, the
microphone, and a little thing called the light bulb. All together he had
1,093 patents to his name.
What was the secret to his success? Edison himself was famous for
saying it was persistence. When asked about the 10,000 ways he tried
to create an incandescent light bulb that failed, he quipped, “I have not
failed. I’ve just found 10,000 ways that won’t work.”
We have all heard axioms about the value of persistence, and they
are true. In order to succeed at anything, you have to be persistent. You
have to persevere, often through very adverse conditions. You have to
have the tenacity to fail again and again, and continue to try anyway. You
have to be willing to fall short, get up, dust yourself off, and try again.
Why is this simple axiom so true? It is true because the instant you stop
trying to attain your goal, in the instant you stop progressing toward
your goal, you fail, no matter how close you were to succeeding. Those
things that were right in front of you are suddenly out of reach.
As Edison himself said, “Many of life’s failures are people who did not
realize how close they were to success when they gave up.” He went on
to say, “Our greatest weakness lies in giving up. The most certain way to
succeed is always to try just one more time.”
So how do you persevere? How do you keep trying, even when
you’ve failed and fallen short of your goal again? Part of it is attitude, but
more appropriately, how you think about and how you characterize not
reaching your goal.
Again, Edison was insightful when he said, “Negative results are
just what I want. They’re just as valuable to me as positive results.
I can never find the thing that does the job best until I find the ones
that don’t.”
Looking at something not working as another positive step in the
process toward figuring out how to make it work is part of the process
by which you can change your outlook, change your attitude toward the
failures; the times you fall short. But it is more than that. It is a process
of never being satisfied with the result, knowing that you are never fully
satisfied even when you succeed. Being willing to be discontented even
with a positive outcome is as important as not being discouraged by a
negative outcome.
In my career, I have witnessed thousands of people who experienced
success, became the best in the world at something, won that first
place or Olympic medal, made a million dollars, patented an idea,
changed someone else’s life for the better, raised a balanced, happy
child, restored a historic house or car to like-new condition, wrote an
inspiring life-changing article or poem… made the world a better place,
and then sadly never did so again.
I value perseverance and persistence. I admire never being satisfied,
even with a positive outcome, but who I really respect and admire
are those that have the resilience to rebound from the failures, the
resilience to not be made lazy by the successes, the resilience to get up
and try again, the resilience to make the good even better. That is how
true wealth is created. It is created by those who are resilient enough to
live St. Jerome’s axiom, “Good, Better, Best. Never let it rest, until your
good is better, and your better is best.”
As chief market strategist, managing director and senior transportation analyst for Avondale Partners, Donald is a frequent guest on
CNBC and Fox. He has been recognized as a top stock picker by “The Wall Street Journal,”“Fortune,”“Zacks” and “StarMine.”
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