It’s quite a thing. Underpinned by belief and faith and determination. Big question – when do you give up? In the words of Winston Churchill, never! In the viewpoint of Malcolm Gladwell definitely not for a very long time – not if you’re going to get those 10,000 hours in to get to Tipping Point (or am I mixing up his books?)
Anyhow, I am thinking of a dear client who has been negotiating various deals for his company over many years, many years. This one here did not pan out. That one, the deal was not right. The next one almost, but not quite. On and on. Each possibility requiring huge energetic input, enormous emotional investment, leaps of faith, holding the space for things to unfold.
Putting yourself out there, in other words. And then the thing does not pan out. So you get up and lick your wounds and fluff up your feathers and prepare to leap off the edge and fly – again and again. And again. As if for the very first time. Without baggage. Without holding onto disappointment or resentment, and without allowing your light and enthusiasm to be diminished in any way.
Can you do that? It reminds me of that Rudyard Kipling poem, “If you can keep your head, when all about you are losing theirs and blaming it on you”. It goes on, “If you can trust yourself when all men doubt you, but make allowance for their doubting too”. That’s the key thing.
(I have an interesting story about this poem, and why I can recite it verbatim… will share in the a blog on ‘Excuses’).
However, back to persistence. It’s a practice, like everything else. Og Mandino in ‘The Greatest Salesman in the World’ has a scroll called ‘I will persist until I succeed, for it is the secret of success in all ventures’.
And, last bit of namedropping… Seth Godin has a lovely little book called ‘The Dip’ – when to stop in a cul-de-sac and when to turn around and walk the other way – an important call to make. A call informed by persistence.
To persist, you need to believe in the impossible! Faith! Hold onto it, and believe in your dream! Believe that someday, somehow, someway, it will come to pass. Then persist. Even if everything around you is tumbling and crashing and contradicting you.
Just persist and it will come to pass. In fact, persist until it comes to pass.
As for the dear client, this here very last deal seems to be happening and it’s huge! Bigger, better, brighter than all the others put together.
So remember also, if it hasn’t happened yet, it’s because something even better is around the corner.
Believe it and you will see it!
What do you need to persist with today that will make all the difference? Do it!
We Create the World.