Perseverance

Most of us have been told, as we grow up, that knowledge and learning are the most important requisites to attain success and win. No doubt knowledge and skills are important; but there is one singular differential that makes winners stand apart: Perseverance with a capital P.

If there is one quality that makes people win and achieve, it is not the amount of knowledge or being excellent in what you do, but it is just about the ability to persevere in the task on hand.

And why is it so difficult to persevere?

Because of the wandering mind. Read any success literature, and they will tell us that the human brain – that mass in the head which drives us in all of our actions and inactions – jumps at over 60000 thoughts a day. An uncontrolled and untamed mind is a wandering generalist. When we persevere, we make it a commander for a single purpose. You give the mind the reason and purpose in unambiguous terms, and then an image of the outcome; you make it the commander for a goal or a purpose.

Only by keeping this intensely active nature of the human mind, is it possible to accomplish success. And this is made possible by putting down the goals to paper, in black and white, with clear timelines and the outcome expected.

Unless you put down the most important needs and tasks in writing, the mind does wander. The minute you write down what is important to your personal and professional growth or life or work, the mind accepts the command at the subconscious level, and immediately drives you to persevere.

Perseverance, thus, is a quality that you can train the mind and body in by your own goal driven actions. By putting it down in writing, you are committing yourself to achieving whatever you want. Perseverance becomes a logical fallout of our need to get to the outcome desired.

Don’t miss the point…. gaining a new skill or improving on the job and climbing in the corporate ladder are all things that may not be such a huge challenge; the humongous challenge is to tune and drill the mind and body to persevere…and once done in a few small or big tasks, the ability to persevere gets embedded as a habit.

Link achieving the goal to pleasure and not doing the same to pain, maybe unbearable pain. When done so, Perseverance comes just naturally, and over a brief period of time, it becomes a winning habit. Most success literatures put this time frame for practice at 21 days.

Associate the ability to persevere or willingness to stay put on the task at hand to being in a pleasurable state of mind and body…and the opposite…not persevering or not focusing on the task as something that is unbearable pain

That moment there would be a paradigm shift in what the mind instructs the body to do. Persevere, experience immense pleasure and achieve goals.

–

Muralidharan is an HR practitioner and a recruitment professional. A strong believer in spreading cheer and positivity, Murali currently works out of Chennai and is a voracious reader and a prolific writer.