Few things are impossible to diligence and skill; great works are performed not by strength but by perseverance.
Every great success in your life will represent a triumph of persistence. Your ability to decide what you want, to begin, and then to persist through all obstacles and difficulties until you achieve your goals is the critical determinant of your success. And the flip side of persistence is courage.
Perhaps the greatest challenge that you will ever face in life is the conquest of fear and the development of the habit of courage. Winston Churchill once wrote, “Courage is rightly considered the foremost of the virtues, for upon it all others depend.”
Fear is, and always has been, the greatest enemy of mankind. When Franklin D. Roosevelt said, “The only thing we have to fear is fear itself,” he was saying that the emotion of fear, rather than the reality of what we fear, is what causes us anxiety, stress, and unhappiness.
When you develop the habit of courage and unshakable self-confidence, a whole new world of possibilities opens up for you. Just think—what would you dare to dream or be or do if you weren’t afraid of anything in the whole world?
Fortunately, the habit of courage can be learned just as any other success skill is learned. To do so, you need to work to conquer your fears while simultaneously building up the kind of courage and confidence that will enable you to deal unafraid with the inevitable ups and downs of life.
Syndicated columnist Ann Landers wrote, “If I were asked to give what I consider the single most useful bit of advice for all humanity, it would be this: Expect trouble as an inevitable part of life, and when it comes, hold your head high. Look it squarely in the eye, and say, ‘I will be bigger than you. You cannot defeat me.’ ” This is the kind of attitude that leads to victory.
The starting point in overcoming fear and developing courage is, first of all, to look at the factors that predispose us toward being afraid.
As we know, the root source of fear is childhood conditioning, usually destructive criticism from one or both parents. This causes us to experience two types of fear. These are, first of all, the fear of failure, which causes us to think, “I can’t, I can’t, I can’t”; and second, the fear of rejection, which causes us to think, “I have to, I have to, I have to.”
Because of these fears, we become preoccupied with the fear of losing our money or our time or our emotional investment in a relationship. We become hypersensitive to the opinions and possible criticisms of others, sometimes to the point where we are afraid to do anything that anyone else might disapprove of. Our fears tend to paralyze us, holding us back from taking constructive action in the direction of our dreams and goals. We hesitate. We become indecisive. We procrastinate. We make excuses and find reasons to delay. And finally, we feel frustrated, caught in the double bind of “I have to, but I can’t” or “I can’t, but I have to.”
Fear can be caused by ignorance. When we have limited information, we may be tense and insecure about the outcome of our actions. Ignorance causes us to fear change, to fear the unknown, and to avoid trying anything new or different.
But the reverse is also true. The very act of gathering more information and experience in a particular area gives us more courage and confidence in that area. There are parts of your life where you have no fear at all because you have mastered that area, like driving a car, skiing, or selling and managing. Because of your knowledge and experience, you feel completely capable of handling whatever happens. You have no fears.
Another factor that causes fear is illness or fatigue. When we are tired or unwell or when we are not physically fit, we are more predisposed to fear and doubt than when we are feeling healthy and happy and energetic.
Sometimes you can totally change your attitude toward yourself and your potential by getting a good night’s sleep or taking a vacation long enough to completely recharge your mental and emotional batteries. Rest and relaxation build courage and confidence as much as any other factors.
Here is an important point: All intelligent people are afraid of something. It is normal and natural to be concerned about your physical, emotional, and financial survival. The courageous person is not a person who is unafraid. As Mark Twain said, “Courage is resistance to fear, mastery of fear—not absence of fear.”
It is not whether or not you are afraid. We are all afraid. The question is, How do you deal with the fear? The courageous person is simply one who goes forward in spite of the fear. And here is something else I have learned: When you confront your fears and move toward what you are afraid of, your fears diminish while at the same time your self-esteem and self-confidence increase.
However, when you avoid what you fear, your fears grow until they begin to control every aspect of your life. And as your fears increase, your self-esteem, your self-confidence, and your self-respect diminish accordingly. As the actor Glenn Ford once said, “If you do not do the thing you fear, the fear controls your life.”
Once you have recognized the factors that can cause fear, the next step in overcoming fear is to sit down and take the time to objectively identify, define, and analyze your own personal fears.
At the top of a clean sheet of paper, write the question, “What am I afraid of?” Begin filling out your list of fears by writing down everything, major and minor, over which you experience any anxiety. Start with the most common fears: the fear of failure or loss and the fear of rejection or criticism.
Some people, dominated by the fear of failure, invest an enormous amount of energy justifying or covering up their mistakes. They cannot deal with the idea of making a mistake. Others, preoccupied by the fear of rejection, are so sensitive to how they appear to others that they seem to have no ability to take independent action at all. Until they are absolutely certain that someone else will approve, they refrain from doing anything.
Once you have made a list of every fear that you believe may be affecting your thinking and your behavior, organize the items in order of importance. Which fear do you feel has the greatest impact on your thinking or holds you back more than any other? Which fear would be number two? What would be your third fear? And so on.
With regard to your predominant fear, write the answers to these three questions:
1. How does this fear hold me back in life?
2. How does this fear help me, or how has it helped me in the past?
3. What would be my payoff for eliminating this fear?
Some years ago, I went through this exercise and concluded that my biggest fear was the fear of poverty. I was afraid of not having enough money, being broke, perhaps even being destitute. I knew that this fear had originated during my childhood because my parents, who grew up during the Depression, had continually worried about money. My fear was reinforced when I was broke at various times during my twenties. I could objectively assess the origins of this fear, but it still had a strong hold on me. Even when I had sufficient money for all my needs, this fear was always there.
My answer to the first question, “How does this fear hold me back?” was that it caused me to be anxious about taking risks with money. It caused me to play it safe with regard to employment. And it caused me to choose security over opportunity.
My answer to the second question, “How does this fear help me?” was that, in order to escape the fear of poverty, I had developed the habit of working much longer and harder than the average person. I was more ambitious and determined. I took much more time to study and learn about the various ways that money could be made and invested. The fear of poverty was, in effect, driving me toward financial independence.
When I answered the third question, “What would be my payoff for eliminating this fear?” I immediately saw that I would be willing to take more risks, I would be more aggressive in pursuing my financial goals, I could and would start my own business, and I would not be so tense and concerned about spending too much or having too little. Especially, I would no longer be so concerned about the price of everything.
By objectively analyzing my biggest fear in this way, I was able to begin the process of eliminating it. And so can you.
You can begin the process of developing courage and eliminating fear by engaging in actions consistent with the behaviors of courage and self-confidence. Anything that you practice over and over eventually becomes a new habit. You develop courage by behaving courageously whenever courage is called for.
Here are some of the activities you can practice to develop the habit of courage. The first and perhaps most important kind of courage is the courage to begin, to launch, to step out in faith. This is the courage to try something new or different, to move out of your comfort zone with no guarantee of success.
Dr. Robert Ronstadt of Babson College, who taught entrepreneurship for many years, conducted a study of those who took his class and found that only 10 percent actually started their own businesses and became successful later in life. He could find only one quality that the successful graduates had in common. It was their willingness to actually start their own businesses, as opposed to continually talking about it.
Ronstadt discovered the “Corridor Principle.” As these successful individuals moved forward toward their goals, as though proceeding down a corridor, doors opened to them that they would not have seen if they had not been in forward motion.
It turned out that the graduates of his entrepreneurship course who had done nothing with what they had learned were still waiting for things to be just right before they began. They were unwilling to launch themselves down the corridor of uncertainty until they could somehow be assured that they would be successful—something that never happened.
The future belongs to the risk takers, not the security seekers. Life is perverse in the sense that the more you seek security, the less of it you have. But the more you seek opportunity, the more likely it is that you will achieve the security that you desire.
Whenever you feel fear or anxiety and you need to bolster your courage to persist in the face of obstacles and setbacks, switch your attention to your goals. Create a clear mental picture of the person that you would like to be, performing the way you would like to perform. Nothing is wrong with thoughts of fear as long as you temper them with thoughts of courage and self-reliance. Whatever you dwell upon grows— so be careful.
The mastery of fear and the development of courage are essential prerequisites for a happy, successful life. With a commitment to acquire the habit of courage, you will eventually reach the point where your fears no longer play a major role in your decision making. You will set big, challenging, exciting goals, and you will be confident that you can attain them. You will be able to face every situation with calmness and self-assurance. The key is courage.
What if you could sit down with one of the most successful men or women in our society and learn all the lessons of success that he or she had taken a lifetime to experience? Do you think that would help you to be more successful?
What if you could sit down with one hundred of the most successful men and women who ever lived and learn their rules, their lessons, and their secrets of success? Would that help you to be more successful in your own life? What if you could sit down, over time, with more than one thousand highly successful men and women? How about two thousand or three thousand?
Your answer is probably that spending time with these extremely successful men and women, learning what they learned in order to achieve their goals, would be of great help to you. The truth, however, is that all of this advice and input would do you no good at all unless you took some specific action on what you had learned.
If learning about success was all that it took to do great things with your life, then your success would be guaranteed. The bookstores are full of self-help books, each one of them loaded with ideas that you can use to be more successful. The fact is, however, that all of the best advice in the world will help you only if you can motivate yourself to take persistent, continuous action in the direction of your goals until you succeed.
The probable result of your reading the ideas in this book has been that you have made some specific decisions about what you are going to do more of and what you are going to do less of. You have set certain goals for yourself in different areas of your life, and you have made resolutions that you are determined to follow through on. The most important question for your future now is simply, Will you do what you have resolved to do?
The single most important quality for success is self-discipline. Self-discipline means that you have the ability, within yourself, based on your strength of character and willpower, to do what you should do, when you should do it, whether you feel like it or not.
Character is the ability to follow through on a resolution after the enthusiasm with which the resolution was made has passed. It is not what you learn that is decisive for your future. It is whether or not you can discipline yourself to pay the price, over and over, until you finally obtain your objective.
You need self-discipline in order to set your goals and to make plans for their accomplishment. You need self-discipline to continually revise and upgrade your plans with new information. You need self-discipline to use your time well and to always concentrate on the one most important task that you need to do at the moment. You need self-discipline to invest in yourself every day, to build yourself up personally and professionally, to learn what you need to learn in order to enjoy the success of which you are capable.
You need self-discipline to delay gratification, to save your money, and to organize your finances so that you can achieve financial independence in the course of your working lifetime. You need self-discipline to keep your thoughts on your goals and dreams and keep them off of your doubts and fears. You need self-discipline to respond positively and constructively in the face of every difficulty.
Perhaps the most important demonstration of self-discipline is your level of persistence when the going gets tough. Persistence is self-discipline in action. Persistence is the true measure of individual human character. Your persistence is, in fact, the real measure of your belief in yourself and your ability to succeed.
Each time that you persist in the face of adversity and disappointment, you build up the habit of persistence. You build pride, power, and self-esteem into your character and your personality. You become stronger and more resolute. You deepen your levels of self-discipline and personal strength.
You develop in yourself the iron quality of success, the one quality that will carry you forward and over any obstacle that life can throw in your path.
The history of the human race is the story of the triumph of persistence. Every great man or woman has had to endure tremendous trials and tribulations before reaching the heights of success and achievement. That endurance and perseverance is what made them great.
Winston Churchill is considered by many to have been the greatest statesman of the twentieth century. Throughout his life, he was known and respected for his courage and persistence. During the darkest hours of World War II, when the German Luftwaffe was bombing Britain and England stood alone, Churchill’s resolute, bulldog tenacity inspired the whole nation to fight on in the face of what many felt was inevitable defeat. John F. Kennedy said of his speeches, “Churchill marshaled the English language and sent it forward into battle.”
One of the greatest speeches in the annals of persistence was Churchill’s address to the nation on June 4, 1940, which ended with these words: “We shall not flag or fail. . . . We shall fight in France, we shall fight on the seas and 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 landing grounds. We shall fight in the fields and in the streets, we shall fight in the hills; we shall never surrender.”
In the later years of his life, Churchill was asked to address a class at his old preparatory school and share with the young people present what he believed to be the secret of his great success in life. He stood before the assembly, leaning on his cane, shaking a little, and said with a strong voice, “I can summarize the lessons of my life in seven words: never give in; never, never give in.”
What Churchill found, and what you will discover as you move upward and onward toward your goals, is that persistence is the one quality that guarantees you will eventually win.
Calvin Coolidge, a president who was so reluctant to speak in public that he was given the nickname of “Silent Cal,” will go down in history for his simple but memorable words on this subject. He wrote, “Press on. Nothing in the world can take the place of persistence. Talent will not; nothing is more common than unsuccessful men with talent. Genius will not; unrewarded genius is almost a proverb. Education alone will not; the world is full of educated derelicts. Persistence and determination alone are omnipotent.”
Successful businesspeople and entrepreneurs are all characterized by indomitable willpower and unshakable persistence.
In 1895, America was in the grip of a terrible depression. A man living in the Midwest lost his hotel in the midst of this depression and decided to write a book to motivate and inspire others to persist and carry on in spite of the difficulties facing the nation.
His name was Orison Swett Marden. He took a room above a livery stable and for an entire year he worked night and day writing a book, which he entitled Pushing to the Front. Late one evening, he finally finished the last page of his book and, being tired and hungry, he went down the street to a small café for dinner. While he was away for an hour, the livery stable caught on fire. By the time he got back, his entire manuscript, more than eight hundred pages, had been destroyed by the flames.
Nonetheless, drawing on his inner resources, he sat down and spent another year writing the book over again. When the book was finished, he offered it to various publishers, but no one seemed to be interested in a motivational book with the country in such a depression and unemployment so high. He then moved to Chicago and took another job. One day he mentioned this manuscript to a friend of his who happened to know a publisher. The book, Pushing to the Front, was subsequently published and became the runaway bestseller in the nation.
Pushing to the Front was acclaimed by the leading business-people and politicians in America as being the book that brought America into the twentieth century. It exerted an enormous impact on the minds of decision makers throughout the country and became the single greatest classic in all of personal development. People like Henry Ford, Thomas Edison, Harvey Firestone, and J. P. Morgan all read this book and were inspired by it.
Orison Swett Marden says in his book that “there are two essential requirements for success. The first is ‘get-to-itiveness,’ and the second is ‘stick-to-it-iveness.’ ” He wrote, “No, there is no failure for the man who realizes his power, who never knows when he is beaten; there is no failure for the determined endeavor; the unconquerable will. There is no failure for the man who gets up every time he falls, who rebounds like a rubber ball, who persists when everyone else gives up, who pushes on when everyone else turns back.”
Confucius said, more than two thousand years ago, “Our greatest glory is not in never falling, but in rising every time we fall.”
James J. Corbett, one of the first world heavyweight boxing champions, said that “you become a champion by fighting one more round. When things are tough, you fight one more round.” Yogi Berra said this: “It ain’t over ’til it’s over.” And the fact is that it’s never over as long as you continue to persist.
Elbert Hubbard wrote, “There is no failure except in no longer trying. There is no defeat except from within, no really insurmountable barrier save our own inherent weakness of purpose.”
Vince Lombardi said, “It’s not whether you get knocked down. It’s whether you get up again.”
All of these successful men had learned how critical the quality of persistence is in achieving greater goals and objectives. Successful men and women are hallmarked by their incredible persistence, by their refusal to quit no matter what the external circumstances. The one quality that absolutely guarantees success in business, in financial accumulation, and in life is this indomitable willpower and the willingness to stick with it when everything in you wants to stop and rest or go back and do something else.
Perhaps your greatest asset is simply your ability to keep at it longer than anyone else. B. C. Forbes, the founder of Forbes magazine, who built it into a major publication during the darkest days of the Depression, wrote, “History has demonstrated that the most notable winners usually encountered heartbreaking obstacles before they triumphed. They won because they refused to become discouraged by their defeat.”
John D. Rockefeller, at one time the richest self-made man in the world, wrote, “I do not think there is any other quality so essential to success of any kind, as the quality of perseverance. It overcomes almost everything, even nature.”
Conrad Hilton, who started with a dream and a small hotel in Cisco, Texas, and went on to build one of the most successful hotel corporations in the world, said, “Success seems to be connected with action. Successful men keep moving. They make mistakes, but they don’t quit.”
Thomas Edison, the greatest failure, and also the greatest success, in the history of invention, failed at more experiments than any other inventor of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. He also perfected and was granted more patents for commercial processes than any other inventor of his age. He described his philosophy in these words: “When I have fully decided that a result is worth getting, I go ahead on it and make trial after trial until it comes. Nearly every man who develops an idea, works it up to the point where it looks impossible and then gets discouraged. That’s not the place to become discouraged.”
Alexander Graham Bell talked about persistence in these words: “What this power is I cannot say; all I know is that it exists and it becomes available only when a man is in that state of mind in which he knows exactly what he wants and is fully determined not to quit until he finds it.”
Ren McPherson, who built Dana Corporation into one of the great American success stories, summarized his philosophy by saying, “You just keep pushing. You just keep pushing. I made every mistake that could be made, but I just kept pushing.”
An interesting and important paradox in life that you need to be aware of is that if you are an intelligent person, you do everything possible to organize your life in such a way that you minimize and avoid adversity and disappointment. This is a sensible and rational thing to do. All intelligent people, following the path of least resistance to achieve their goals, do everything possible to minimize the number of difficulties and obstacles that they will face in their day-to-day activities.
Yet, in spite of our best efforts, disappointments and adversity are normal and natural, unavoidable parts of life. Benjamin Franklin said that the only things that are inevitable are death and taxes, but every bit of experience shows that disappointment is also inevitable. No matter how well you organize yourself and your activities, you will experience countless disappointments, setbacks, obstacles, and adversity over the course of your life. And the higher and more challenging the goals you set for yourself, the more disappointment and adversity you will experience.
This is the paradox. It is impossible for us to evolve, grow, and develop to our full potential unless we face adversity and learn from it. All of the great lessons of life come as the result of setbacks and temporary defeats, which we have done our utmost to avoid. Adversity therefore comes unbidden in spite of our best efforts. And yet without it, we cannot grow into the kind of people who are capable of scaling the heights and achieving great goals.
Throughout history, great thinkers have reflected on this paradox and have concluded that adversity is the test that you must pass on the path to accomplishing anything worthwhile. Herodotus, the Greek historian, said, “Adversity has the effect of drawing out strength and qualities of a man that would have lain dormant in its absence.”
The very best qualities of strength, courage, character, and persistence are brought out in you when you face your greatest challenges and you respond to them positively and constructively.
Everyone faces difficulties every step of the way. The difference between high achievers and low achievers is simply that high achievers utilize adversity and struggles for growth, while low achievers allow difficulties and adversity to overwhelm them and leave them discouraged and dejected.
The work by Abraham Zaleznik at Harvard University proved that the way you respond to disappointment is usually an accurate predictor of how likely you are to achieve great success. If you respond to disappointment by learning the very most from it and then by putting it behind you and pressing forward, you are very likely to accomplish great things in the course of your life.
This is another remarkable discovery. Your greatest successes almost invariably come one step beyond the point where everything inside of you says to quit. Men and women throughout history have been amazed to find that their great breakthroughs came about as a result of persisting in the face of all disappointment and all evidence to the contrary. This final act of persistence, which is often called the “persistence test,” seems to precede great achievements of all kinds.
H. Ross Perot, who started EDS Industries with $1,000 and built it into a fortune of almost $3 billion, is one of the most successful self-made entrepreneurs in American history. He said this: “Most people give up just when they are about to achieve success. They quit on the one-yard line. They give up at the last minute of the game, one foot away from the winning touchdown.”
Herodotus also wrote, “Some men give up their designs when they have almost reached the goal; while others, on the contrary, obtain a victory by exerting, at the last moment, more vigorous efforts than ever before.”
You find this principle of persistence, of keeping on, in the life and work of countless great men and women. Florence Scovel Shinn wrote, “Every great work, every big accomplishment, has been brought into manifestation through holding to the vision, and often just before the big achievement comes apparent failure and discouragement.”
Napoleon Hill, in his classic, Think and Grow Rich, wrote, “Before success comes in any man’s life, he is sure to meet with much temporary defeat and, perhaps, some failure. When defeat overtakes a man, the easiest and most logical thing to do is quit. And that is exactly what the majority of men and women do.”
Harriet Beecher Stowe, who wrote Uncle Tom’s Cabin, also wrote these words, “Never give up then, for that is just the place and time that the tide will turn.”
What you do not see—what most people never suspect of existing—is the silent but irresistible power that comes to your rescue when you fight on in the face of discouragement.
Claude M. Bristol wrote, “It’s the constant and determined effort that breaks down all resistance, sweeps away all obstacles.”
James Whitcomb Riley put it this way: “The most essential factor is persistence—the determination never to allow your energy or enthusiasm to be dampened by the discouragement that must inevitably come.”
The power to hold on in spite of everything, to endure— this is the winner’s quality. Persistence is the ability to face defeat again and again without giving up—to push on in the face of great difficulty. There is a poem by an anonymous author that I think everyone should read and memorize and recite to himself or herself when tempted to quit or to stop trying. This poem is called “Don’t Quit.”
When things go wrong, as they sometimes will.
When the road you’re trudging seems all uphill.
When the funds are low and the debts are high.
And you want to smile, but you have to sigh.
When care is pressing you down a bit.
Rest, if you must, but don’t you quit.
Life is queer with its twists and turns.
As every one of us sometimes learns.
And many a failure turns about
When he might have won had he stuck it out:
Don’t give up though the pace seems slow—
You may succeed with another blow.
Success is failure turned inside out—
The silver tint of the clouds of doubt.
And you never can tell how close you are.
It may be near when it seems so far:
So stick to the fight when you’re hardest hit—
It’s when things seem worst that you
MUST NOT QUIT.
1. Identify the biggest challenge or problem facing you today on the way to achieving your biggest goal. Imagine that it has been sent to test your resolve and desire. Decide that you will never give up.
2. Think back over your life and identify the occasions where your determination to persist was the key to your success. Remind yourself of those experiences whenever you face difficulties or discouragement of any kind.
3. Resolve in advance that as long as you intensely desire your goal, you will never give up until you achieve it.
4. Look into every problem, difficulty, obstacle, or setback for the seed of an equal or greater benefit or opportunity. You will always find something that can help you.
5. In every situation, resolve to be solution oriented and action oriented. Think always in terms of what you can do right now to solve your problems or achieve your goals and then get started! Never give up.