Persistence and Patience-2 key ingredients for success

Jay-Z, a very successful American rapper, entrepreneur, songwriter, and record producer once said:

Only two thing are going to get you through this man, that’s patience and persistence.

These two words have great power in our lives. We can all remember instances where we accomplished something because we were persistent (more persistent than others). We want it so bad, so we kept at it. Day in and day out. Eventually, we succeeded. The key factor that supplemented our persistence level was patience. Patience to trust the process. Patience to wait for the results that we reaped year ago. Patience and persistence, two great friends that help us get ahead in life.

Now, let’s define persistence and patience. Persistence is according to the Oxford dictionary, the fact of continuing in an opinion or course of action in spite of difficulty or opposition. In this definition, we can notice two words that stand out and those are: difficulty and opposition. Difficulty and opposition are essential for our progress. If we don’t experience any difficulty or opposition, then we wouldn’t need any persistence. Persistence makes it all worthwhile.

Patience is defined as the capacity to accept or tolerate delay, problems, or suffering without becoming annoyed or anxious. This means that we are not annoyed if we don’t see results immediately. We are not annoyed if it would take years to accomplish what we set out to accomplish. .

I believe that every successful man or woman has these two skills highly developed. The reason why some people succeed and some fail are because those that fail give up sooner than those that succeed.

In this article, I am not talking about what I called a blind persistence. Somebody has a blind persistence when he/she is pursuing things that aren’t working, the data and facts are showing that the things aren’t working. Moreover, a person has a blind persistence when he or she is doing the same things over and over again and expecting different results.

What I am talking about in this article is an adaptive persistence. You have an adaptive persistence when you set your vision for your life or a company and you pursue it with everything you got. Along the way, you will need to adapt, change things, strategy, but you are persistent to get to your vision. The road will be more like a roller coaster. But you don’t mind because you have your vision in front of you and persistence will get you there.

When you have your vision in front of you, you need to practice patience and stay on the course. It is easy to get distracted by shiny objects and never-ending chatter in the World.

So, how do you start to practice these 2 key ingredients for a successful life?

Start with defining your vision and then your goals to support that vision. Your vision needs to be super inspiring for your next 30–40 years. Your vision is your essence that captures how you want to leave a legacy in this World. For example, my vision is: To express myself to my fullest potential by impacting the World with my creative powers and create values that will inspire and empower generations to come.

To support this vision of mine, I have 14 goals that will get me to my vision. You see, my goals can change. On the way to my vision, I may discover that some of them will not get me to my vision. I will accomplish some and then replace them with the new ones, but I will be persistent and patient towards my ultimate vision. There will be difficulties and opposition, but again I will be persistent. I will have an adaptive persistence.

Logically, if something is working, I will keep at it, if something is not working, I will change it.

Let me know what is your vision for your life or your business in the comment section below and how you will use persistence and patience to thrust you towards your vision,

Until next writing,

D.P