“Nothing in this world can take the place of persistence. Talent will not; nothing is more common than unsuccessful people 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” – Calvin Coolidge
I needed that quote today to remind me of how important it is to press on…even when you don’t feel like it. Even when your back hurts from carrying boxes, and your head hurts from answering everyone’s questions at the same time, and your stomach is tied up in stress knots because you have a million calls to return and an email box that is busting at the seams and you know there is no way you are going to get to any of it today, which just makes you dread facing the ever mounting piles tomorrow. Yes, even then it is important to press on.
It is so easy to talk yourself into giving up….it is so easy to make an excuse as to why you are justified to stop working, to give up, to walk away. You can always find some valid justification on why that would be okay. But the truth is that it isn’t always okay to give up and walk away. Sometimes that is exactly opposite of what you really need to do. Sometimes if you will just put your head down and work like crazy then you will overcome whatever trial or hurdle you are facing.
The most genius things I have ever done in my life didn’t come because of genius at all…they came from straight up hard work…the crazy hard kind of work to be more exact. The kind of work that was so hard that I wanted to quit over and over but I told myself that quitting wasn’t an option – I told myself that my only real option was to press forward and simply GET IT DONE – and then I would go to work and do it. And surprisingly enough that worked. Hard work overcame almost every problem ever thrown at me. Hard work and persistence that is.
Don’t give up when things get hard. When things get hard just work harder. Persist and watch the miracles start to happen. And when you find that you have succeeded in accomplishing whatever it is you set out to accomplish, be sure to look back and recognize that this was the result of your persistence finally paying off.
PLEASE NOTE: Ken McKeveny didn’t quit the band. There’s a test for that.
Nothing in this world can take the place of persistence… Amy Rees Anderson
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