What do you do when that big project, contract, or opportunity you’ve been hoping for, even counting on doesn’t come through? Do you hang back to lick your wounds, feeling too shy or afraid to move forward confidently?
Sometimes we triumph over great odds to achieve our goals, and sometimes “fate” intervenes to give us tremendous failure. Persistence is the ability to keep moving forward in the wake of failure, in the midst of intense fear or fatigue, or even after reaching the summit of a long sought-after peak.
Persistence says, “When I have failed, I will use my remaining strength to take one step forward.” Persistence calls on you to ask for a referral from the client who didn’t give you the big contract. Persistence asks you to “strive, to seek, to find, and never to yield.” And, persistence invites you to do as Michael Jordan…who once said:
“I have missed more than 9,000 shots in my career. I have lost almost 300 games. On 26 occasions I have been entrusted to take the game winning shot… and I missed. And I have failed over and over and over again in my life. And that is precisely… why I succeed”
