Calvin Coolidge aptly sums up the quality of persistence:

“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 alone are omnipotent. The slogan ‘Press On’ has solved and always will solve the problems of the human race.”

The conventional definition of persistence is: “Refusing to give up or let go; persevering obstinately; firm or obstinate continuance in a course of action in spite of difficulty or opposition.”

Is it any wonder then, that persistence is the fundamental difference between a successful outcome and a failed outcome? In that case, it behooves us to develop the vital quality of persistence.

Here are some tips on developing persistence or perseverance:

How to Develop Persistence

Decide what you want to accomplish and set goals. We all know how important setting goals is for achieving success in any endeavor, so take some time to figure out what it is you want. Do you want to lose ten pounds, graduate from college, run a marathon or be a business success? In a study done in New York several years ago researchers surprisingly found that people who set clear, concise goals succeeded in achieving them 95% of the time! Interestingly, the one caveat or stipulation was that they only achieved their goals if they refused to quit and continued to bounce back from difficulties along the way.

Indeed, no significant feat has ever been accomplished without the trials and tribulations that go along with it. In his wonderful poem Don’t Quit Edgar Albert Guest gives us plenty of inspiration and encouragement to forge ahead, particularly when the going gets tough. (Have a look at the poem: Don’t Quit).

Prepare for Obstacles and Setbacks. Know and accept that there will be obstacles and setbacks; then prepare for them. Nothing important was every accomplished without adversity, setbacks and difficulties to contend with along the way. Henry Ford went bankrupt three times before he managed to design his first automobile. As we all know and are grateful for, he subsequently succeeded to become one of the richest men in the world. He said: “Failure is merely an opportunity to more intelligently begin again.” Thomas Edison is said to have tried 10,000 times to create the light bulb before he succeeded. His attitude was: “I have not failed. I’ve just found 10,000 ways that don’t work.” Persistence is definitely the difference between a successful outcome and a failed one due to giving up.

One of the ways you can prepare for setbacks and obstacles is to anticipate potential problems and have a contingency plan. For example, if you’re trying to lose weight, you must know that there will be occasions when it’s not possible to stick to your weight loss regimen. In such cases, you will need to prepare alternative meals ahead of time or be mentally prepared to deviate from your regimen. Unfortunately, instead of allowing for and being prepared in such situations, many people give up entirely declaring it impossible to stick any diet. In doing so, they often sabotage all healthy eating and give up in despair.

Another example would be endeavoring to become a marathon runner and you fail on your first attempt at finishing a marathon. Should you give up and never try again? No, not at all! You would have to figure out where you may have miscalculated your fitness level, the type of food you ate and your training patterns. After doing some research to find out how improve, you would then give it another whirl!

Also keep in mind that when we are overwhelmed with a problem or difficulty, we don’t have time then to develop the persistence necessary to deal with the particular obstacle or set back. However, if we plan in advance for life’s inevitable ups and downs, we will be psychologically ready when they come upon us.

Take the first step. You cannot persevere; much less succeed, if you never try to accomplish something. So many of us procrastinate, fear failure or are too frozen in our tracks to take the first step towards achievement. You will not fail if you don’t try something, however, you will never succeed either. As the popular saying goes, “The only real failure in life is the failure to try.”

Review, reevaluate and revise. If things do not work out the way you hoped then review the steps you took and the process you followed. Reevaluate by examining what went wrong and where. What didn’t work? What could you have done better? Did you have all the necessary skills and tools? Your findings will be most illuminating, and in turn, allow you to set up a better, more comprehensive approach. You will revise and improve the current strategy.


Garner support and encouragement. Stay away from naysayers; instead seek advice from those experienced in your field of endeavor and those who want you to succeed. They can assist you by making suggestions and recommendations based on their experience and expertise. You will still have to do the hard work, but there is nothing more encouraging than having positive reinforcement.

Maintain focus. One of the obstacles to attaining success is losing motivation and focus. A good way to maintain focus is to visualize yourself accomplishing your goal no matter what it takes. Vividly see yourself accomplishing your goal – keep your eye on the prize. Likewise, avoid getting caught up in negative or unproductive thinking such as, “This will never work.” “I can’t do this.” Instead, keep inspiring slogans handy, pictures of those who have persevered in life, and whatever else will motivate and boost your drive.

Enjoy! The greatest feelings of accomplishment derive from knowing you’ve overcome obstacles and conquered adversities to achieve your goals. Your ultimate success will be exponentially more satisfying and fulfilling when you know what it took to get there.

People who have persisted in spite of disabilities and obstacles:

• Ludwig van Beethoven (composer, pianist) became deaf at the age of 30 and composed most of his beloved works after he lost his hearing.
• Helen Keller (author) was deaf and blind from the age of 19 months. She wrote 12 books, various articles and was the first blind person to receive a Bachelor of Arts degree.
• Ray Charles, Stevie Wonder (musicians) both of whom are blind have achieved much in their genres of music.
• James Earl Jones (actor) known for his booming resonant voice was once a stutterer.
• Marlee Matlin (academy award-winning actress) is deaf.
• Itzhak Perlman (virtuoso concert violinist) has legs paralyzed from polio.
• Terry Fox (runner) was an amputee from cancer.

How would it be if every area of your life was progressively, day by day, becoming more positive; scarcity turning to abundance, fear to boldness and daring, sadness and upsets to happiness; and this was happening just by the way you lived your life?

This is an optimum way to live life, making life itself the improvement process. Every minute of every hour of every day, real improvement is happening.

All life is a Process

Although this seems a bold statement, when tested, it is the truth. A process is simply something that brings about an end or result. Using this definition, it can be seen that all areas of life do have an associated end or result, whether positive or negative.

Working at a job is a process. You do work to achieve a result. One positive outcome of doing a job is that a product valuable to the business is produced, for which the worker gets a return in the form of wages.

Having a conversation with someone is a process; an idea travels from person A at the source point to person B at the receipt point across a distance, person B then replies across the distance to person A and finally person A acknowledges the reply back to person B, again across the distance. The process then repeats until the conversation has completed, with the source point alternating between A and B as required.

The magic sequence to handle any area you are connected with and take it to being the best it can be is:

1. Maintain Presence
2. Focus on the positive
3. Find a way to win
4. Be friendly
5. Make more of
6. Work with.

Maintaining Presence

This is the prerequisite to performance and is the first step in performing any task in any area. You can only operate at your full potential in an area when completely present in the time and place where you need to be. This is being at the right place and time or ‘in the Zone’. Anything that reduces your level of presence will immediately take your attention off what you are doing and dramatically affect your performance.

If you are in the process of doing something, such as ironing a shirt, going to the store or doing something in your job and you find yourself veering off, not completing the task and doing another action; then something has ‘triggered’. It has accessed your mind, and is taking your attention off the area. Many times this is what causes individuals to make mistakes and produce incorrect products.

When this happens it is vitally important to de-access by asking yourself ‘what just happened’, ‘was I reminded of something’ or ‘when was it going well’. Until you get an answer to the question you ask yourself, your attention will stay focused on the accessed area caused by the trigger, not the task in hand.

Once you have the area de-accessed and in focus, you can move to the next step. Of course, if you remain fully present, then no de-accessing is required.

Focus on the Positive

Positive processes make life better, negative processes make life worse. Every person runs many, many processes during a day, and these can vary from being highly positive to highly negative.

The way to recognize a positive process is that while it is being performed, mood maintains a high point, increasing as the performance level increases. The reason for this is that being positive is closely associated with truth. The more positive the process being run, the closer to the truth it is.

The real skill is to turn all the processes you are running in life into positive ones, thus maintaining a high mood. Enthusiasm, action and spirit of play, passion are all moods created by processing the positive.

If you find yourself identifying negative in an area, then you need to find something positive about it. For example, you are running late for an appointment and you get stuck behind a slow moving truck. You could run a negative process on this, cursing the truck driver, and getting very angry about it, destroying your mood. However, you could alternatively run a positive process, noticing something good about the truck or the way it is being driven. As you find one positive, many more can come to view. This is because processing the positive makes more positive.

Example questions to ask are:

• What part of this <person/thing/area> is positive?
• What do I like about <person/thing/area >?
• What do I admire about <person/thing/area >?

Try these now on any area in your life you currently have any negative thoughts or ideas about and notice the positive change that takes place in your attitude towards that area.

Find a Way to Win

Winning is defined as setting a target and achieving it. Winning produces happiness.

So the next part of the sequence is to take the area and find the next step you can actually do and produce a result. This generates a win, increasing your mood, putting you closer to the truth. Then you take the next step that you can do and do that. Sometimes a step will require you to study something to gain understanding, or practice to improve a skill. If you have any difficulty just doing a step, this is a good indication that there is some knowledge or skill missing connected to the step. Doing the actions to correct this is then the next logical step.

Most difficulty in this part of the sequence is that it can trigger prior times when steps have been left incomplete. This can result in immobility and reluctance to enter the area. If this is manifesting in any parts of your life, you need to do an ‘empty your head’ exercise.

To do the exercise, take a plain piece of paper and a pen and list everything that is in your head at that exact time. Continue listing until you have nothing left to list and your head is clear. You can then concentrate on completing the items on the list. Every time you feel your head is full, do the exercise again. The trick here is to not just to file or throw the pieces of paper away, but rather; do them now or schedule them.

The effect of doing missed ‘completions’ can be miraculous. All of a sudden, you have all of your horsepower back under your control, not tied up on all the ‘stuff’ you have not completed!

You would be well advised to practice doing a ‘completions’ list on all your current outstanding items to demonstrate to yourself the power of doing this action.

Be friendly

Being friendly is the next part of the sequence. When you are being friendly you are actively assisting in helping yourself or another get what they want.

It may sound a little strange to say you help yourself get what you want, but this is exactly what you need to do. Most people are not as friendly to themselves; they tell themselves that they are not good enough, don’t deserve what they want, etc, etc. Really being a friend to yourself requires you to truly like yourself; in fact it requires love of self.

If a person has been in an abusive environment, then it can be exceedingly difficult for them to even like themselves, always falling back to the opinion they were given by the abuser they were entangled with.

Again, the rule here is to initially find just one area or item that you can like about yourself and build on this until you feel deserving enough to help yourself get want you want. Once you have resolved this, you can be truly friendly with yourself and not go into opposition with your wants and dreams.

A good question to ask is:

• What do I like about myself?

Practice using this now 5 to 10 times and make a list of what comes up.

Make more of

Making more of is a highly positive activity. Even if someone is being negative, the action of making more of it by hugely exaggerating it will result in a complete duplication, causing the negative to turn to positive.

For example, if someone is complaining of how bad the traffic is, you make more of it by saying; “Yes, I know exactly what you mean, just last week I was stuck in traffic on that road for over 2 hours and had to send out for pizza because I was starving and the delivery boy said all the pizza places were doing amazing business because of the traffic…blah, blah, etc, etc”

On the positive side, to make more of you increase the positive. For example, if you reach an objective, make more of it by finding ways you could do it better, faster, more harmoniously, more friendly, etc, etc.

You can do this very effectively when working with others by asking the above questions when anyone reaches an objective. This will enable improved performance, higher mood, more laughter etc.

Take some time and practice making more of during the next day or so and make some notes of what you experienced from doing it. You can do this by using lines similar to the one that follows:

• That really is a great <thing>, how did you come by it?
• I really like your new <item>, where did you get it from?
• Hey, your <action/result> today was great, well done!

Work with

Working with is the way to build true lasting success. This is an attitude and approach that enables any positive activity to succeed.

To work with, you align with and contribute to already existing positive attributes, adding to the positive flow. An example here is working with nature in designing a house. Here you could align the house in a south facing direction to take advantage of the sun. Using natural material for construction, rather than man made would be another way to work with nature. Another example would be working with a wholesale customer to improve delivery times, where the solution may be either the location of inventory, or shipping items direct to the final retail customer.

Working with to its fullest extent requires total truth and honesty, and no hidden agendas, both when working with others and in working with ourselves.

Now you should take some time and list how you could most effectively work with the individuals you currently associate with. Then record the effect doing this exercise has on these relationships.

Conclusion

The above 6 step process if applied to life will take every area to a level of Mastery. It requires total truth and honesty to do this, both to other individuals you associate with and to yourself.

However, it will not happen unless you make it happen; the final result being in your hands. Those of you who pick this up and run with it will experience great positive change. Furthermore, if you take it, adapt it and make it your own, then the possibilities to produce miraculous results will be truly in your hands.

Malcolm Bugler

In a recent TED Talk, an educator and psychologist said that the single most important human quality in achieving personal success is grit. Through her research she discovered that grit outweighs social intelligence and academic achievement when it comes to realizing their goals, achieving what they set out to do and overall success. Grit is the ability to stick to it, to keep going when you want to give up, to persevere until you reach the end. When the researcher was asked how to develop grit in oneself her answer was, “I don’t know”.

Through my research, training and experience as a processor I have seen and know for myself that grit has to do with the amount of emotional charge a person has or doesn’t have. In other words, it is the amount of available, free attention and mental energy a person has. When a person falls into apathy they lose sight of their goals, they drift off of what they wanted and eventually get so far from their original want and dream that it becomes something remote and unrelated to them. This isn’t to say that people with grit don’t have any emotional charge. But they are able to push it aside. They are choosing to stay the course in spite of the downturn of events. We all react differently to charge. The less charge a person has the more able they are to find out what they really want in life and then make it happen. There’s no right or wrong about this, one way is not better than the other. It’s all about what’s makes you tick and putting your heart and soul into your work and play.

If you are following the program but you’re not feeling it, you’re grittiness is depleted. Someone who goes into a profession because that was the best option but not really what they wanted will have less joy and passion in their work than someone who defied the consequences and followed their goals and dreams. In the TED talk the presenter found that the teens and young adults with grit were highly focused. When you know what you want and you go after it you’re happy. The grittier the happier. So the million dollar question is how to get more of it. When you’re doing something for more than just the moment and more than just yourself, when you’re doing for others and for the long haul you’re playing a big game in life. That big game will transcend the day to day ups and downs; the game will give meaning to the routine and your focus will be expanded and your mood will be high. When you have passion for a cause it may take a lifetime to fulfill but that’s not going to stop you. Your grit, love and integrity will see you through.

Talking and listening should add up to communication, right? Not always. Communication is delicate yet powerful, it can make you fall in love, it can start wars, it can create a feeling of belonging and being nurtured and it can cause the darkest pain. The first question you must ask your self is, what do I want to get across in my verbal or physical expression, that is, what do I want to communicate and to whom?

There are eight steps to effective communication. To live an aware, causative life, you need to be very precise and tenacious in implementing these eight basics. Omitting any one of the steps or failing to apply the steps correctly will negatively impact personal, professional and business relationships. Conversely, applying these steps and mastering your communication will breathe life into your existing relationships optimizing personal, professional and business relationships.

These eight basics are what underlie all personal accomplishments and happiness.

( The originator of the communication is referred to as Source A. The receiver of the communication is referred to as Source B.)

Step One:      ARE YOU READY AS SOURCE A?
Is your attention free enough to focus on the person whose attention you want? Are you fully present to deliver your communication? In order to have an effective and successful communication, no matter how simple or complex, you must start the process correctly, that is, being present and focused.

Step Two:      IS SOURCE B READY?
Is Source B’s attention free enough to focus on you or where you want to direct his attention? Trying to talk to someone from another room or when they’re preoccupied is frustrating for both parties. Both A and B have to be present in order to have an effective communication.

Step Three:   YOU DELIVER A COMMUNICATION THAT SOURCE B CAN COMPREHEND.
A vital part of delivering good communication is verifying that the person truly comprehends the entire communication. It should mean the same to both the sender and the receiver.

This seems simple enough but in fact it requires a high level of awareness, presence, focus and directness. A statement or question that creates confusion that is not resolved often results in upset.

Step Four:     SOURCE B LOOKS AT WHAT THE COMMUNICATION DIRECTED THEIR ATTENTION TO.
When a communication is delivered to a person, that person will relay the communication and his attention to his mind or something in the environment. This triggers the mind into pulling up data files, with the appropriate information being presented to the receiver for viewing. The receiver will then observe the information presented by the mind or environment. This step can be instantaneous or might take up to several hours.

Step Five:      SOURCE B RESPONDS IN SUCH A WAY THAT YOU CAN COMPREHEND.

Step Six:        YOU ACKNOWLEDGE IN SUCH A WAY THAT SOURCE B KNOWS THAT HE’S BEEN COMPREHENDED AND APPRECIATED.
An acknowledgment means: I heard what you said, I duplicated what you told me, I understand, I appreciate that you took the time to respond. An acknowledgment is the completion of the segment of the communication. It’s like a period at the end of a sentence. It let’s you know that communication is complete and understood.

An acknowledgment is a form of truth. It is an indication that you are receiving at this time, in this place and in this mood, a description of a happening. It does not require that you agree with the idea or viewpoint you just received.

Step Seven:   SOURCE B FEELS THAT HE HAS BEEN COMPREHENDED AND APPRECIATED.   This is manifested by the person brightening up, coming to life, a more cheerful demeanor, a degree of certainty, a feeling of being more at cause.

Step Eight:    ARE YOU READY?T
This is a partial repeat of step one, except that a certain change has taken place. Therefore, a correct next question or statement would be needed.

These eight basics have corresponding exercises that are designed to strengthen your skill and ultimate mastery in effective communication. To remove upsets and conflict out of your life and replace it with harmony, prosperity, friendliness and happiness, it becomes mandatory to put your integrity in on your communication skills. Please contact Life Technologies about these exercises.

COMMUNICATION SEQUENCE

1. Are you ready as Source A?
2. Is Source B ready?
3. You ask a question that the person can comprehend.
4. The person looks at what has been accessed.
5. The person tells you in such a way that you can comprehend.
6. You acknowledge in such a way that the person knows that he has been comprehended and appreciated.
7. The person feels that he has been comprehended and appreciated.
8. Are you ready?

The intention of what you want to communicate, what you do communicate and what is received and duplicated should all equal understanding.