Why persistence is the key to success

Persistence

The fact of continuing in an opinion or course of action in spite of difficulty or opposition.

You press on even when you feel like quitting, until you achieve that important goal. WHY?

Your Personal Growth. Persistence is a very important to develop because it is intimately interlinked with one’s own personal development and self-improvement. You will grow in life by failing at things, learning from those experiences and moving on. Without persistence, your ability to grow and develop as a person will be restricted, and so will be the amount of success, wealth and happiness that you will be able to achieve.

What if the following people didn’t persist?

It's been said that KFC founder Colonel Sanders was rejected 1009 times before finding a taker for his chicken recipe.

Colonel Sanders started travelling by car to different restaurants and cooked his fried chicken on the spot for restaurant owners. If the owner liked the chicken, they would enter into a handshake agreement to sell the Colonel's chicken. Legend has it that Colonel Sanders heard 1009 "no’s” before he heard his first "yes". Did you read that correctly? Yes, he was rejected 1009 times before he was accepted once.

What if he had given up after the first 50 or 100 times, we would not have KFC today.

When a reporter asked, "How did it feel to fail 1,000 times?" Edison replied, "I didn't fail 1,000 times. The light bulb was an invention with 1,000 steps."

Thomas Edison was not the inventor of the electric light bulb, but he did produce the first commercially viable one. Throughout his career, Edison worked on many improvements to his signature invention, an invention that literally changed the way we live after dark. Prior to the light bulb, folks burned lamp oils or used manufactured natural gas for illumination, a rather dangerous way to provide illumination. Electric lights became cheap, safe, and convenient to use and the public and commercial concerns installed them in rapidly increasing numbers. The rest is history.

Maybe if not Edison someone else would have invented the light bulb but because of his persistence, he is known.

Jim Carrey first became internationally known in 1994 after the release of Ace Ventura: Pet Detective. Over the next two decades he grew into one of the highest-paid actors in the world, regularly earning $20+ million for a single movie.

His family struggled financially and, as teenagers, Carrey and his brother would work eight-hour shifts after school as janitors and security guards at the tire factory where their father was employed. On his sixteenth birthday, Carrey dropped out of school; he began to perform comedy while continuing to work at the factory. Sometime later, his family became homeless and lived together in a Volkswagen van.Carrey's impersonations bombed and this gave him doubts about his capabilities as a professional entertainer. The family's financial problems were resolved and they moved into a new home. Carrey returned to the stage with a more polished act. In a short period of time, he went from open-mic nights to regular paid shows, building his reputation in the process.

What if?

What if these people decided to quit, what if you decide to quit? You will never know your true potential and the greatness you can achieve! Yes, you do need to start in order to finish, what is holding you back? Self-doubt, fear of failure, lack of knowledge maybe? Stop listening to the negative voices, your self-talk and the opinions of others. What have you got to lose? There is no success without trying!