Why You need to be Persistent
At age sixty-five , it is said that Colonel Sanders had assets of a beat-up car and a $ 100 check from Social Security . He realized he had to do something to improve his position . He remembered his mother ’ s fried chicken recipe and went out selling . How many doors did he have to knock on before he got his first order ? It is estimated that he had knocked on more than a thousand doors before he got his first order . Yet how many of us quit after three tries , ten tries , or one hundred tries and then we say we tried as hard as we could or that we did our best ? What would have happened to this man if he gave up and decided to quit trying ?
As a young cartoonist , Walt Disney faced many rejections from newspaper editors who said he had no talent . One day a minister at a church hired him to draw some cartoons . Disney was working out of a small rodent-infested shed near the church . Seeing a small mouse inspired him to draw a new cartoon . That was the start of Mickey Mouse .
Just after becoming the prime minister of Britain , Winston Churchill addressed Parliament on May 13 , 1940 . In his first address as the prime minister , he soberly described the Nazi threat and rallied his people to face the darkest days of World War II with tenacity and perseverance : “ I would say to the House , as I said to those who have joined this government : I have nothing to offer but toil , tears and sweat . We have before us an ordeal of the most grievous kind . We have before us many , many months of struggle and suffering . You ask , what is our policy ? I will say : It is to wage war by sea , land and air with all our might and with all the strength God can give us … That is our policy . You ask , what is our goal ? I can answer in one word . It is victory — victory , at all costs , victory in spite of all terror — victory , however long and hard the road may be , for without victory there is no survival ” ( William Manchester , The Caged Lion , Michael Joseph , London , 1988 , pp . 682-683 ).
With resolute , tenacious courage and perseverance , the British people rallied behind their leader . June 4 , 1940 , after the major defeat at Dunkirk , Churchill announced to his countrymen , “ We shall go on to the end . We shall fight in France . We shall fight on the sea and the oceans . We shall fight with growing confidence and growing strength in the air . We shall defend our Island , whatever the cost may be . We shall fight on the beaches . We shall fight on the hills . We shall fight in the fields and in the streets . We shall never surrender ” ( ibid ., pp . 683-684 ).
Against all odds , the British people did fight with perseverance and , after the long hard Battle of Britain , they emerged victorious . Some two decades earlier American President Calvin Coolidge also recognized the importance of persistent perseverance : “ Nothing in the world can take the place of persistence . Talent will not ; nothing is more common than unsuccessful people with talent . Genius will not ; unrewarded genius is almost a proverb . Education will not ; the world is full of educated derelicts . Persistence and determination alone are omnipotent .”
Success , and greatness thereof , does not come on a silver platter . In everything , if one must succeed , one must master the discipline of persistence perseverance . The above examples are just a way to make us understand what it really takes to defy all odds and become all we are created to become . Perseverance is one consistent trend among many great and successful people . It is defined as the fact of continuing in an opinion or course of action in spite of difficulty or opposition . It ' s the ability to keep pushing even when nothing seems to work anymore . It ' s also the ability to keep on walking even when the road becomes rocky and rendered impassable . Persistence has the power to cause even the fierce and most stubborn situations and people to lose their fierceness and become as docile as a lamb . It ' s indeed a strange power that cannot be resisted even by the most difficult situations and people . It ' s refusal to give up ; it ' s refusing to take ' NO ' for an answer . Persistence is what causes people to keep on pushing forward , no matter how tough the going becomes . It is one thing we all need to become successful in whatever we do .
Persistence results from commitment and leads to determination . Those who persist find pleasure in endurance . It is a decision – a commitment to finish what you start . When we are exhausted , quitting looks good , but winners endure . Ask a winning athlete and he will tell you that he endures pain and finishes what he started . Lots of people who are failures began well , but never finished anything .
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