Habit# 29: Persistence

52 Habits to Change My Life

Persistence might be an ingredient to your life that you are missing.

Persistence is the choice to stay on the path you are on to completion. You don’t give in to obstacles or side tracked by shiny objects.

Photo by Dave Lowe on Unsplash

Recently, I did an About Me Assessment on Ray Dalio’s app Principles (It’s free, you should check it out.) One result that jumped out at me was persistence. I was not surprised that it was low. Yet it hit me. That this is something I should work on.

It is easy to become discouraged and distracted from our dreams. Obstacles, challenges and setbacks are all part of achieving any thing.

Persistence gets you through those challenges. It is what it takes to keep fighting some days when what you are doing doesn’t seem to be worth it.

Every little bit of work does add up. It takes time to build great things.

I tend to get distracted easily. I have given up when things got hard. I have gotten frustrated when a project has felt like it’s progressing too slow. My lack of persistence is the problem.

Not seeing or knowing exactly where something is going is hard. It is easier to get things done when you know exactly every single step. But many times we are not going to have every answer to each part. We have to keep going even though we don’t know. — That is persistence.

A journey

of a

1000 miles

begins

with a

single step.

Starting is sometimes the hardest part. Taking that step into the unknown is hard. Especially when you know there is no going back. You have to trust yourself that you will figure things out as you go. That you’ll be able to adjust to changes so you can keep going.

The first step might not be the hardest of them all. Sometimes the hardest step is standing back up. — That is persistence.

Failure is only fatal if you want it to be.

You can either choose to learn and try again with more knowledge or you can give up. By viewing failure as learning and part of the journey we…