The Benefits of Developing Persistence and How to Keep It.
Persistence can be a difficult journey, especially when starting!
But we need it to succeed, unfortunately.
Persistence takes a true love of the process, which is why it can be so difficult! Suppose we’re doing something for extrinsic motivation, or external validation of some kind. In that case, it can be tough to proceed and persist when the validation or positive results we desire may not come every time or even for a long time.
Especially in darker, tougher times.
Anyone can run a business and call themselves an entrepreneur when the money is rolling in, but what about when you have to pivot and have to follow through on difficult decisions?
This can be many decisions such as:
- When you have to make office cuts
- Serve challenging customers
- Maintain resources to train employees
Delegating time-consuming tasks knowing they’ll get done:
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- Do tasks you don’t want to do like taking the trash out yourself because your staff quit
- Have hard conversations with stakeholders, admitting it’s not going well
- Track and budget the company’s expenses and ROI (Return on Investment) when you know the news is going to be bad
- Even sell your whole business at a loss when you had dreams of growing it into millionaire status
Do you love it enough to keep going or are you just doing it for a paycheck, the praise and success? Are you enjoying the process and striving for perfection as you create and watch with joy what is unfolding? Are you excited about doing the hard work because it allows you to do the fun work?
When I achieved my world record for the longest distance reversing a semi-truck 55 miles or 89 km in four hours! I knew I had to complete 120+ laps of the track we had set up to beat the previous record of 39 miles (62 km).
How was I able to sit in a truck for four hours going in reverse?
I made a game of it! Every lap I had marks on the road at numerous points to hit. I knew if I kept hitting them I would be driving a smooth fast lap. As soon as I had hit one marker on the track with my trailer tires I kept going and looked for the next one.
Yes! Got it too.
Next one.
Hmm, not quite. Just missed it. Now I’ve got something to improve on the next lap.
Now I’m getting rough with the truck. Ok, easy Brett… Smooth it out
Next marker… Got it!
And to me, this was one of the coolest games I could have created for myself. Hit enough marks on the ground and you get a world record, Brett. Drive a big truck in reverse for four hours? Sounds like fun to me!
It can be difficult to do anything consistently for any length of time but if you enjoy the process it becomes easy. Driving big trucks probably taps into a childhood excitement for me. I used to play with little toy trucks.
As an adult, I get paid to play with big ones in movies and for truck work driving across the country.
What do you enjoy? What gives you a deep sense of fulfillment? You may have forgotten about it to do more “adult things” like pay bills.
Go back to when you were last working, building, tinkering, creating, or serving without any reward and doing it just because… There’s probably something in that.
Great article! Thank you