The word perseverance does gives rise to one question? How long? The answer lies in the fact that really makes one wonder about what is the difference between people who give in and give up and those who reach their personal goals and go far beyond the expectations of the world.

             Why do some people live lives that do not live up to their own dreams and aspirations and then feel bad about it afterwards while some people just seize the moment and go for their dreams and more importantly stick with them?

           While the definition of success may be relative and mean different things for different people, there are habitual patterns in people that give clues to how their life will eventually turn out regardless of what they pursue. Everyone in life has setbacks, both big and small. The bigger ones may feel more noticeable, but even the smaller ones can take a toll on the way we think and feel. These challenges can leave people scrambling to keep up, and might lead to people reconsidering their paths and goals. Here there is a failure from perseverance.

      For most people, the typical journey to achieving success spans over a number of years sometimes even decades.

       There are those lonely moments where no matter how much effort you put into your success journey you seem to be spinning wheels and there is minimal if any movement. It is tempting to get discouraged and wonder what the point of going on is. Worse still when you look around it seems as if others are making good progress on their goals.

What should one do for perseverance ? How do you cope with the frustration? How do you keep on walking in the desert when you are thirsty and there is no water in sight?

One thing to remember is that many people who have succeeded have endured hardships, challenges and failures at some point in their life. They kept going because they were determined to make a difference in both their lives and those of others.

10 steps to practice perseverance.

1. Believing yourself.

The most amazing step in practicing perseverance is having faith upon yourself and having faith of accomplishing the job. Whatever may come and go but there shall be a strong desire to go ahead towards your goal and achieve the goal in its true perspective. If you believe you can then you will not be taken back by surprises.

In order to persevere, you need to develop a deep and unflinching sense of hope and belief in your abilities and the idea that you will succeed and persevere.

It is this belief when on a shaky foundation that makes people give up and give in even though they might be close to victory.

If you can develop an attitude of overwhelming optimism and hope regardless of the course of the journey, you have a much better chance at perseverance.

2. Keep your goals in mind.

When we make mistakes or fail, many people will be tempted to give up altogether. Instead, if you want to persevere, keep your goals in mind at all times. Start by writing down your short and long-term goals somewhere that’s easy to access. Then, anytime there’s a bump in the road, take a look at that list to inspire you and keep you moving forward.

3. Take Risk

By learning to take risks, you raise the probability of facing more difficult situations. When in those difficult situations, if you can learn to adapt and understand what steps are necessary to keep yourselves moving in the right direction, you can grow as a leader.

4. Be ready to fail.

The most difficult experience that you might come up against in your journey of perseverance is the idea of setbacks and failure and how to manage them.

Everyone wants to succeed quickly but failure is interwoven into the story of success and perseverance. Perseverance comes from failing and getting back up. Without failure, you cannot become resilient.

            So, you have to change your relationship with failure to seeing it as a lesson, rather than a setback. You can learn so much from failure that changing your attitude toward it can have amazing implications for your life.

           In fact, you should not have it any other way. Failure teaches you how to adjust your sails to navigate the seas of uncertainty and do things differently. If you change the meaning that you assign failure and setbacks, you will have much better success in perseverance. If you take failure and use it to your advantage, you can persevere the change of seasons without losing hope.

5. Be positive.

Getting negative vibes is the worst thing that will never help to give you the power to develop perseverance within you. You have to think and work positively. We have to believe that every negative Even though we all know this,it does not seem that way when you are in the middle of the storm.

Your world turns upside down and all you think of is a way out, an escape. Take a deep breath and settle in the understanding and awareness that nothing lasts forever. Negativity wants you to feel sorry for yourself and doubt your abilities to succeed.

Think of yourself in a kind and positive way.

Acknowledge all the things that you like about yourself. Everyone has something special to offer the world.

Avoid the pattern of thinking that just because you failed in one thing you will fail in everything.

Struggles are a part of life.

A river forges its way by fighting rocks gradually over time until it has a well-defined path.

Remember back to when you were learning to ride a bicycle, it took determination to master balancing on a bicycle but once the pattern was learned it was firmly imprinted in one’s mind.

Similarly the mind is strengthened from tackling current challenges and you could identify familiar patterns and cycles which can be reapplied to future problem solving.

6. Stop quitting as a Habit.

The most important lesson you may learn on the path of perseverance is that the chances to quit will be plenty and the roads will diverge many times. The choice is yours to make if your power of perseverance is greater than the sum of relief that defeat will provide.

    Many times, staying the course is uncomfortable and scary and uncertain and you will want to quit. Always remember that no matter what happens, you should continue forward. Even if it means taking a rest and repurposing your plan, you need to move forward.

Even if it means taking the assistance of others, you need to move forward. Every success and journey of perseverance becomes a habit. Every act of quitting takes you closer to making it a habit of quitting.

7. Take actionable steps.

Often people think that change should happen in huge leaps and measurable change. While this happens sometimes, you should not feel discouraged by the apparent lack of progress.

One of the biggest threats to perseverance is the lack of results and the subsequent quitting while it is still too soon to see any results.

A better option is to take very small steps and keep at it instead of taking a giant leap and then quitting.

You also risk the potential of burnout if you go all out and then quickly lose interest. You may need to dive deep into the core of why you are doing something and keep that intention steadfast in your attention.

In other words, small steps are highly effective and perhaps the best way to maintain perseverance over long periods of time.

8. Build Network Support.

If you want to learn how to persevere, you should build a network of support. Building a network of support that includes family, friends, co-workers and peers will allow you to have a comfortable place to open up and get feedback and encouragement during hard times. Whenever something goes wrong, you can turn to your network of support and talk through what’s going on.

9. Develop Skills.

This is unquestionably one secret that all highly creative and successful people share with each other. They allow the single-minded pursuit of the skill that they want to master.

They then practice at the edge of their comfort level by slowly but surely honing their skills. They practice every sequence, every stroke, every note till they have acquired mastery in their realm.

Creativity expert Ken Robinson gives the example of Paul McCartney and George Harrison who were in the same class together in Liverpool in the 1950’s.

McCartney hated music at school and went through his entire education with no one recognizing his musical genius. Harrison was thought to have no talent at school either.Yet they practiced away in clubs in Germany and the UK much before the Beatles became a runaway and “instant success.”

However, there may be no great people who did not put in a lot of work and persevere till they became fluid and masterful in their arts.

10. Exercise Regularly.

There is a rule that can be applied in perseverance and that is the  40% rule. The rule is that if you complete 40% of the task, your likelihood of quitting drops drastically. To develop this skill physical training is a must. Lifting weights, doing sprints or even some endurance training is guaranteed to carry over to your mental resilience.