Table of Contents

• Why Important
• Perseverance and Its Applications
• Developing Perseverance
• Clarify Your Values
• Regularly Reaffirm Your Goal
• Create Greater Leverage That Will Increase Your Motivation
• Develop the Habit of Finishing What You Started
• Be Aware of Your Fears
• Make a Timeframe for Attaining The goal
• Stick Closely to your Timeframe
• Realize that There is No Failure

I. Why Important

Perseverance is perhaps the most important key to success in any endeavor. It can replace deficiencies in talent. While this is widely acknowledged, not many people seem to have developed this important ingredient in their life.
Genius is one percent inspiration and 99% perspiration.– Thomas A. Edison
II. Perseverance and Its Applications

Perseverance is persistence in the pursuit of an end or in an enterprise undertaken in spite of difficulties, opposition or discouragement. It means being able to handle one’s reaction to difficulties, and not get carried away by such emotions or reactions:

Career or Life Work
Building Wholesome Relationship
Self-Development, Maturity and Spiritual Perfection
III. Developing Perseverance
1. Clarify Your Values
Without knowing what is truly important to you, it is almost impossible to be truly persevering. One must have a strong reason for keeping on a chosen path. That reason must be important enough to override less important factors that cause discouragement.

Make sure that what you are aiming for is grounded on solid foundations. An objective that is not ethical will create inner conflict in you. Therefore, your aim should be morally sound. It must not cause injury to others. It must not be selfish.

Perseverance alone does not assure success. No amount of stalking will lead to a game in a field that has none. — I Ching

2. Regularly Reaffirm Your Goal

Once you have set your goal, then continually reaffirm to yourself that you wish to finish the task or reach the objective. Remind yourself by writing it in a place or a notebook where you will constantly see it. Read materials that will enhance your determination to pursue your objective.

3. Create Greater Leverage That Will Increase Your Motivation

To make your body, feeling and mind be more supportive of your determination, deliberately create leverage so that you will be more motivated. Suppose you wish to reduce your weight for health reasons, and you have difficulty resisting good food, and you constantly violate your new year’s resolution to watch your diet.
Example: Increase your motivation by creating a mental association that will connect sweet and fatty foods to something you dislike. Or reward yourself for resisting sweets, or penalizing yourself for succumbing to it. Make a game out of it.

Let your family take part in your resolution, if possible.
4. Develop the Habit of Finishing What You Started

Once a person has developed this habit, he has within him a powerful tool connected with perseverance. He will not give up until something is done, no matter how inconvenient.

Nothing is so fatal to character or accomplishment as unfinished jobs. – S

. W. Sill

5. Be Aware of Your Fears

Lack of perseverance is often due fear to do something or face consequences. You may wish to learn how to speak in public, but you are always overcome by fear. Conquer your fears, for they are often our own traitors, turning ourselves against our priorities.

All too often people quit when the going gets tough, often when just one more step would have carried them triumphantly to victory. There is one unbeatable rule for the mastery of sorrows and disappointments, and that is transmutation of those emotional frustrations through definite planning. It is a rule that has no equal. — Napoleon Hill.

Never despair, but if you do, work on in despair, — Burke

6. Make a Timeframe for Attaining the Goal

. . .It is said that a goal without a deadline is not a goal.

Put a timeframe to what you wish to achieve, say in two years time. Don’t be vague. Be as definite in your deadline as you can. Make it reasonable, but stick to it.
Make a timeframe for doing the intermediate steps necessary for the attainment of your objective. If you wish to finish a book in two years. Make a schedule to devote time to writing and finishing specified chapters consistently.
7. Stick Closely to your Timeframe

Your timeframe is your own appointments with yourself. Do not skip them in the same way that you do not miss your appointments with other people.

8. Realize that there is No Failure

There is only temporary defeat. Failure is in not trying to pursue what is worth aiming for. Keep on. Keep at it. Once you know that it is worthwhile, you will not fail.

We can do anything we want to do if we stick to it long enough. — Helen Keller Success in life depends upon staying power. The reason for failure in most cases is lack of perseverance. Men get tired and give up. — J R. Miller

Diligence is the mother of good fortune. — Cervantes

Victory belongs to the most persevering. — Napoleon

The greatest results in life are usually attained by simple means and the exercise of ordinary qualities. These may for the most part be summed up in these two — commonsense and perseverance. — Owen Feltham.

The secret of success is constancy of purpose. — Disraeli

There are two ways of attaining an important end: force and perseverance. Force falls to the lot only of the privileged few, but austere and sustained perseverance can be practiced by the most insignificant. Its silent power grows irresistible in time. — Anne Swetchine

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 before. — Polybius

Patience and perseverance are essential in the inner fight. The higher self’s war with the lower self is a great struggle. Develop these two virtues to a maximum degree and strengthen them by all manner of intelligent discipline and constant exercise. — Sivananda

The world wants the kind of men who do not shrink from temporary defeats in life, but come again and wrestle triumph from defeat. — Theodore Roosevelt

Tough times never last. . . but tough people do. — Robert Schuller

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 will not; the world is full of educated derelicts. Persistence and determination are omnipotent. The slogan “press on” has solved and always will solve the problems of the human race. — Calvin Coolidge

Aim at perfection in everything, though in most things it is unattainable; however, they who aim at it, and persevere, will come much nearer to it, than those whose laziness and despondency make them give it up as unattainable. — Chesterfield

The difference between perseverance and obstinacy is, that one often comes from a strong will, and the other from a strong won’t. — Henry Ward Beecher

Never give in, never give in, never never never never — in nothing, great or small, large or petty — never give in except to convictions of honor and good sense. – Winston Churchill

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Copyright 1995. Permission to reprint is granted provided acknowledgment is made to:
Peace Center
Theosophical Society in the Philippines, 1 Iba St., Quezon City, Philippines
E-mail: tspeace@info.com.ph

“If five percent of the people work for peace, there will be peace.”