“Success consists of going from failure to failure without loss of enthusiasm.”
Winston Churchill
Persistence is continuing in an opinion or course of action despite difficulty or opposition.
Nothing good or great has ever been acquired without this superpower. I call it a superpower because it is so rare in people, hard to obtain, and almost impossible to hold on to.
Why is it so hard to acquire and so hard to hold on to?
Because persistence is what you need to acquire consistency, and consistency is what you need to become a leader. When I say leader, I don’t mean you will rule over many, but you will need to become a leader to govern yourself.
“If there is no enemy within, the enemy outside can do us no harm” – this African proverb tells us all we need to know about who is our only enemy. You are your only and worst enemy. If you are not persistent and consistent, you will never be able to conquer yourself, and if you don’t conquer yourself, you will never amount to anything in your life.
Back to persistence.
Persistence is hard to acquire and hard to hold on to because it gets attacked by the people closest to you. By the ones you genuinely love. And it hurts your soul. It hurts your soul because you are shocked that they can not see that you are doing everything for them. You want to include them in your evolution, and they just want to take you down to their own level. And they are doing it because they may have tried and failed, or maybe even worse, they never tried anything significant in their life.
It hurts. Your parents, siblings, spouse even your own children. It’s an emotional attack on all fronts and hurts like hell.
I can hear them all right now: “Come on, you are not special. Don’t try so hard. Don’t work so hard. You are never going to make it. Don’t you see how many times you got knocked down? Just come here and let us all complain about how unfair the government is, how unfair life is, how bad other people really are while we are perfect. And all this while we do nothing to better our lives.”
No! Not me! I’m not stopping! I will follow my dreams and work hard every day until I make it or die trying.
I love you all, but I am not listening to you, and I am not starting to complain about anything because complaining is a clear indicator of giving up.
I am going to climb my mountain, and you will see me waving from the top, or you will find me dead on the side somewhere because I am not turning back.
And I am going to do it all with God and for Him because I don’t want anything without Him!
Hey, who are you? Am I ever going to know your name? Are you one of those rare ones who fight the good fight to acquire the superpower of persistence? Are you tough enough to get to consistency and succeed?
Are you?
See you at the top!
With love, yours truly, Cristian.