Call it what you will – tenacity, determination, grit – a large part of becoming successful is to keep going until you succeed. This may sound trite. The fact is, though, many give up too readily, or do not understand the connection between uncertainty and perseverance.
It all comes back to the numbers game. If the odds of success are inherently slim because we are pursuing ideas with the potential for outsized payoffs, or we find ourselves in highly competitive arenas where chance events can play a decisive role, then failure, bad luck or at least some unforeseen setbacks are unavoidable.
And the bolder our ideas, the more people will be inclined to reject them, at least at first. When such events occur, we must learn what we can, adjust our activities accordingly and carry on.
We cannot allow setbacks, failures, new information, broken beliefs, mistakes, unforeseen events or even temporary plateaus in our development to cause us to give up. These are unavoidable features of the landscape. And success may be just around the next corner.
The only way to find out is to keep trudging up the road, taking Churchill’s words to heart: ‘Never give in, never give in, never, never, never, never – in nothing, great or small, large or petty – never give in except to convictions of honour and good sense.
