Happy New Persevere

Creativity.

Vigor.

Emotional intelligence.

Charisma.

Self-confidence.

Emotional stability.

Physical attractiveness.

Some people are endowed with all these natural gifts.

And yet achieve only modest success.

What separates high achievers from those who achieve only modest success?

People have asked this question through history.

In 1907, William James observed what for most of us holds true: “Compared with what we ought to be, we are only half awake. Our fires are damped, our drafts are checked. We are making use of only a small part of our possible mental resources . . . men the world over possess amounts of resource, which only exceptional individuals push to their extremes of use.”

The answer, according to this study, is grit.

Grit, defined as “Perseverance and passion for long-term goals”.

Happy New Year.

Happy New Persevere.

May this be the year when you do everything with “grit”.

Whatever your goals, may you have the doggedness to stay the course ….

Even when fatigue, boredom, failure, discouragement, obstacles, illness, lack of progress, and other people’s advances dishearten you.

Keep going.

Because success may be just around the next corner.

Or the next.  Or the next.

Read my post Meditations on the Weed to see how many nexts you should be measuring your determination by.

In big things and in small, doggedness pays off.

Because just when we think we are not getting anywhere and we are never going to achieve something….

…..we do.

Like when I first learned to make rice.

I just could not get the hang of it.

I would end up over-cooking or under-cooking it.

All the time.

And then suddenly one day I got it right.

And never looked back.

Phew.

It was a big achievement for the twice-a-day rice-eating person of Asian Indian origin that I am.

Or that I used to be.

In recent years, when I became health conscious, I switched to healthier eating habits.

I had to persevere again to stick with my new diet.  My post 4 Healthy Eating Ideas I learned from My Friend Julia tells you about some of the choices I made.

So perseverance means trying and trying again.

But perseverance also means…..

…. being prepared to make the journey even when the destination is completely uncertain and far from sight.

Andrew Gide said: “One doesn't discover new lands without consenting to lose sight of the shore for a very long time.”

Christopher Columbus, Lewis and Clark, and Henry Morton Stanley must have had the spirit of this quote coursing through their veins to undertake the journeys they did.

Perseverance also means….

….being willing to follow where your muse leads you and being willing to create for creativity's sake.

Do you know that when Stieg Larsson created the hit Girl With The Dragon Tattoo series, he created it for his own entertainment, following his muse?  The books were discovered only after his death.

Perseverance also means...

….having faith.

Believing wholeheartedly that what you want to do can be done.

Abraham Lincoln believed this.  He said…..“Determine that the thing can and shall be done, and then we shall find the way.”

Perseverance also means….

…..sacrificing short-term payoffs.

Many great accomplishments can only be achieved over the long term.

Such as starting a business.

In the short term, all you may be able to do is survive. 

But bit by bit, building on the previous day’s lessons, resources, experience, connections, franchise, and stream of income, you can ultimately expect to thrive and get your due reward.

Likewise, if you want to be a doctor, in the short to medium term, it will be study, study, study and more study (while your friends play).

But if you persevere and keep at it, when you are done, you will be able to count on a stable and rewarding future.

Perseverance almost always involves ….

….hard work and preparation.

For instance, if you plan to participate in a marathon, you will need to persevere in training for it months ahead.

Anyone who has successfully completed a marathon or a walk like the Avon Walk for Breast Cancer (my friend Majella is one of them) will tell you you can’t be a weekend warrior or a couch potato and hope to do it.  Why do you think so many people join Team in Training to prepare?

The world definitely needs more people who can persevere.

  

Because in crucial fields such as human rights, victories are almost always won because of perseverance.

The perseverance of dogged souls who won't back down.

From Abraham Lincoln to Frederick Douglass to Rosa Parks to Martin Luther King Jr.

From Abigail Adams to Elizabeth Cady Stanton to Margaret Sanger to Susan B Anthony....

and more...

......the history of human rights is the history of people who persevered.

Indeed, social progress is almost always achieved because of people who persevere.

In fact, if you desire anything that’s out of the norm, be prepared to persevere to get it.

In asking to telecommute in each of my jobs in America, I had to persevere to achieve my aim.

What are the times when you have persevered and stood your ground to get something you really wanted?

We all have different principles and goals and privileges we are willing to persevere for.

And perseverance means different things to different people.

Here’s John Quincy Adams, one of the founding fathers of the U.S. on perseverance…. “Patience and perseverance have a magical effect before which difficulties disappear and obstacles vanish.”

Here’s Newt Gingrich on perseverance “Perseverance is the hard work you do after you get tired of doing the hard work you already did.”

And here’s Julie Andrews on perseverance “Perseverance is failing 19 times and succeeding the 20th.” If you are, or have been an advertising copywriter or art director, I am sure you can relate to Andrews’ idea of perseverance.

Finally….this could be the story of how Mahatma Gandhi won India’s independence, “Perseverance is more prevailing than violence; and many things which cannot be overcome when they are together, yield themselves up when taken little by little.”

Happy New Year.

Happy New Persevere.

I end with this beautiful quote from Rabindranath Tagore:

“Let me not pray to be sheltered from dangers,
but to be fearless in facing them.

Let me not beg for the stilling of my pain, but
for the heart to conquer it.”

To those of you who have persevered and overcome great obstacles to get to where you are, I say to you “Bravo, You are My Hero”.

To those of you currently persevering to get to where you want to be, I say to you “Plow on, You are My Hero”.

Thanks for reading and see you next week……M

Happy New Vernacular

Happy New Year.

Happy New Vernacular.

Hope you find new ways to communicate next year.

As Paul J Meyer said – Communication - the human connection - is the key to personal and career success.

And this series of posts which includes (Happy New Here, Happy New Seer, Happy New Cheer, Happy New Dear, Happy New Career and Happy New Peer), is dedicated to wishing you both.

May this be the year when you become better at the things you both say and do.

Because communication is often the source of our biggest joys and our biggest sorrows.

An interest in psychology will serve you well.

Not just the psychology of other people.

But also your own physiological and mental make-up.

Speaking when you are tired, when you are preoccupied, when you are busy, when you are stressed, when you are hungry, when you are angry is rarely productive and rarely produces positive outcomes.

I have written about this before.   If you want to read what I had to say, you can do so here.

Here’s Ambrose Bierce on why you should never speak in anger: “Speak when you are angry and you will make the best speech you will ever regret.”

So become a student of yourself.

Be super conscious of yourself especially at critical moments.

Because knowing when to speak is just as important as knowing how to speak.

Speech of course is uniquely human and we can’t even wait to form understandable words to begin . Here’s Annie Dillard on that: “There is a certain age at which a child looks at you in all earnestness and delivers a long, pleased speech in all the true inflections of spoken English, but with not one recognizable syllable.”

Those of you with young children will relate.

As we gain in years and understanding, we become more and more conscious of the differences in speech.

Here’s Zhuang Zi on the differences between speech that emanates from great minds and speech that emanates from small minds:  “Great wisdom is generous; petty wisdom is contentious. Great speech is impassioned, small speech cantankerous.”

We also become more and more self-conscious.

Eager to sound brilliant and wise, we often become nervous and tongue-tied.

This is especially if we feel we are on the outside looking in.

Here’s Stephen Spielberg on the awkwardness of not belonging: “I never felt comfortable with myself, because I was never part of the majority. I always felt awkward and shy and on the outside of the momentum of my friends' lives. ”

And here’s Winston Churchill on the challenges of making an after dinner speech: “There are two things that are more difficult than making an after-dinner speech: climbing a wall which is leaning toward you and kissing a girl who is leaning away from you.”

Thank heavens for Toastmasters.

Where you can conquer that crippling nervousness and acquire the tools to speak confidently and well.

One of the many positive outcomes that Toastmasters delivers is teaching you how to be brief.

Learning to give short speeches takes practice.

If you ever need a line to shut up a long-winded speaker, here’s one from Muriel Humphrey, the wife of former Vice President Herbert Humphrey : “Hubert, a speech doesn't have to be eternal to be immortal.”

One of the things I was surprised to discover at Toastmasters, was if I scripted and memorized a speech, it not only helped me to stick to the time limit, but I was also able to deliver it better.

Mark Twain came to this realization over a century ago when he declared: “It usually takes me more than three weeks to prepare a good impromptu speech.”

Speech that leads to laughter is of course the most wonderful of all.

Here’s Max Eastman on the importance of laughter: “Laughter is, after speech, the chief thing that holds society together.” And here’s Audrey Hepburn on laughter “I love people who make me laugh. I honestly think it's the thing I like most, to laugh. It cures a multitude of ills. It's probably the most important thing in a person.”

Walt Disney went so far as to say America’s chief business is laughter.

And he took that to heart by making Disneyland and Disneyworld the happiest places on earth.

Speaking of happiness, you have a better chance of making your day going well if you begin the day with happy thoughts and happy words.

Here’s Norman Vincent Peale on that: “Watch your manner of speech if you wish to develop a peaceful state of mind. Start each day by affirming peaceful, contented and happy attitudes and your days will tend to be pleasant and successful.”

A love for words should inevitably lead you to a study of the great speeches of our time.

Speeches such as Martin Luther King Jr.'s I Have a Dream, The Last Lecture by Randy Pausch, or Steve Jobs’s commencement speech at Stanford.

We can’t help but come away from these speeches with impassioned hearts and minds.

Hope you too become a speaker who can stir people’s hearts and minds.

A love for words might also lead you to other languages.

Like Dr.Carlos do Amaral Freire, who holds the record for knowing 115 languages, and has discovered that the most unique of them is Aymara, a language spoken in the Andes and Altiplano regions of South America.

If you had to learn a new language, which would you choose?  And what’s your most recently discovered word from another language? Mine is schadenfreude from German.

Of course words, though they may be the chief tools of human communication, are not the only ones.

The beautiful thing about the language of love, for instance, is that you don’t need words.

Here’s Ingrid Bergman: “A kiss is a lovely trick designed by nature to stop speech when words become superfluous. ”

The wag of a dog’s tail, excited barks and jumps; a nuzzle from your pet cat or horse …..all say “I love you” without words.

Sighs are a form of speech, so are hand gestures, body postures, grunts.

Even tears and silence.

Here’s Ovid on tears, “Tears at times have the weight of speech “and here's Susan Sontag on silence, “Silence remains, inescapably, a form of speech. ”

Can you think of situations where someone’s tears or silence said more to you than they ever could  have with words?

Finally our lives matter more than anything we can say with our mouths and pens.

As Mahatma Gandhi said, “we do not need to proselytize either by our speech or by our writing. We can only do so really with our lives. Let our lives be open books for all to study.”

Happy New Year.

Happy New Vernacular.

Thanks for reading and have a great week. …..M

P.S. I would like to recognize BrainyQuote for the quotes in this post.  BrainyQuote and Good Reads are my go to sources for quotes, and have provided a lot of food for thought for this blog.