“Continuous effort — not strength or intelligence — is the key to unlocking our potential.” — Winston Churchill
The journey will take longer than you hoped.
The obstacles will be more numerous than you believed.
The disappointments will be greater than you expected.
The lows will be lower than you imagined.
The price will be higher than you anticipated. — John Maxwell
- People fail much oftener from want of perseverance than from want of talent.
Unless we persistently seek our goal, we can hope for no reward. When we become exhausted, disheartened, and give over our efforts; if we are appalled by obstacles, and faint on account of the embarrassments thrown in our way; if we pine for ease, and withdraw, shows that we have no true attachment to the cause. The path of duty is often found to be the path of difficulty and discouragement. Efforts are often misunderstood and ill-requited; plans are ridiculed, motives misrepresented, hopes of success treated as visionary and absurd, still the conscientious, right-minded, people of determination proceed as they act from principle, not impulse. Our great want is confessedly staying power as impulse and spasm are common. Make indomitable perseverance your bosom friend in your pursuit, it always ensures ultimate success.
2. When people lose their courage, their strength avails them nothing.
Great works are performed not by strength but by perseverance.We are so feeble that we can bear nothing; if a trouble does but touch us, nay, if it does but threaten us, we faint immediately and are ready to give up all for gone; and by this means we render ourselves unfit to grapple with our trouble and unable to help ourselves. Remember, dripping water hollows out stone, not through force but through persistence and failure cannot cope with indefatigability. It is weak to be scared at difficulties, seeing that they generally diminish as they are approached, and oftentimes even entirely vanish. No man can tell what he can do till he tries. It is impossible to calculate the extent of human powers; it can only be ascertained by experiment.
3. Success comes to only those who are confident.
The confidence of success is almost success, and obstacles often fall of themselves before a determination to overcome them. There is something in a resolution which has an influence beyond itself, and it marches on like a mighty lord among its slaves; all is prostration where it appears.
When bent on good it is almost the noblest attitude of a person.
It is by habitual resolution that individuals succeed to any great extent; impulses are not sufficient. What is done at one moment is undone the next, and a step forward is nothing gained unless it is followed up. The aim and effort must always be forward and yet forward, and nearer and yet nearer the mark.
Most people fail, not for the want of brains, but for want of purpose. A person with a purpose sees and seizes the opportunity, and is the creator rather than the creation of his/her circumstances. A foolish thing it is for humans to curse their fate and blame their “unlucky stars.” Most people have facilities enough to win victories if only their faculties were brought into the field under the marshalship of a single, central, and imperial purpose. Patience, pluck, persistence, those are the things that win.
4. You have only to endure to conquer- Winston Churchill
We all desire change as monotony is irksome. The absence of variety is painful.
Sometimes our work/job is so laborious and monotonous that it is almost unbearable. What we want is, to get fresh impulse by a reconsideration of the motives by which at first we were impelled. Then the toil and labor of service endured in it; will seem a trifle, like fire, it devours all delays and difficulties, spending and exhaling itself.
In the fell clutch of circumstance
I have not winced nor cried aloud.
Under the bludgeonings of chance
My head is bloody, but unbowed. — William Ernest Henry
5. Patience — How much need we all have of it! How it sweetens life and lessens its ills!
We become discouraged and weary when we do not see immediate fruits of our labor.
As the husbandman, in plowing, sowing, and variously laboring in his fields, is supported by the hope of a plentiful harvest, which he cannot expect before the right and appointed time, so it is with anything we want to achieve in life.
Mushrooms spring up overnight, but they are usually poisonous. The best fruits require time, cultivation, patience. We are too ready to suppose that our exertions are utterly without success because we do not see the success. The plant-life which, in the world of nature, grows with great rapidity dies with equal rapidity; but that which is permanent is the slow-growing, hardwood. Patience will bring more success and happiness than power.
Patience, industry, and perseverance- three great elements of success in life.
6. Diligence will cause an individual to rise anywhere and in any calling.
Diligent hands are speedily rendered expert. Those that are diligent and honest when they are apprentices will come to be masters.
By the “diligent” we are to understand the nimble-handed — those who are active and agile, who will lose nothing for want of rising early and peering about in the darkness if they may but catch a glimpse even of an outline of things. Those who take account of microscopic matters — they are particular about the smallest coins, about moments and minutes, about so-called secondary engagements and plans. A person who is regardless of little things will be very apt to be careless of those that are greater.
“If you do not wait on your business, your business will not wait on you.”
7. It’s always too soon to quit!
The sky will grow dark, cold rain will fall and all trace of the right way will be blotted out. We will be all alone. And still, we will have to go on. The last bridge will fall behind us and the last lights will go out, and still, we will have to go on. We will come to regions more desolate and wretched than we ever dreamed could exist, but still, we will have to go on. We just can’t throw away all the hard work and the time we put into it because the times are hard. Success is what happens after we have survived all our disappointments.
Never let your head hang down, never give up, never quit if it really matters to you, press on.
