Lessons from An Experiment on Persistence

Lessons from An Experiment on Persistence

Persistence: The drive to keep working toward a goal despite facing stress, tiredness, or failure.

Most of us think we are persistent but if you are anything like me you probably are not as persistent as you could and SHOULD be. Recently a friend has had serious medical challenges and extreme persistence was required in two ways. One, the diagnosis. Both the medical professionals and I failed in this regard by not going above and beyond what was expected of us: we did the normal and correct steps and tests but when we found nothing I and the doctors thought we had done our job well. How wrong we were. Now we are in the treating and healing step which is going to takes years and we [friend and I] have decided to be much more persistent than we were before. It’s paying off.

In fact, I’ve decided to do experiments with persistence in all the challenges in my life and ALL of them are paying off… after much frustration and many “wasted” hours. While I am being successful in my getting done what I want, I am also seeing that getting things done that are hard takes a lot more energy than I had thought. This energy is what I have been not able/willing to expend in the past so quite honestly I often gave up before thinking my chosen task was impossible…. How wrong I was. I now know that what I needed more of in life is persistence.

Now I have actually known for decades that persistence is the secret ingredient in life but I used the excuse of my poor health as an excuse not to be persistent. How did I learn this? From the father of System Dynamics Jay Forrester at a conference around 2001. I asked him: “what is the most important ingredient to achieving your life goals?” He said: persistence. I never forgot that. I have kept this truth close to my heart and thought I had applied it I my life – but the medical event described above tells me otherwise. Now I know why I did not: being persistent is hard, darn hard. It takes a ton of energy and a kind of bull dogged determination and stubbornness that is totally unreasonable for a “sensible and rational person”… but it works! I guess it’s time to not be sensible.

So, when you ask yourself if you should give up in the face of the unfolding ecological and social catastrophe… I say: never give up. Persist. Does this ensure success? Of course not! But without it, you are guaranteed failure. Not only in results, but in how you feel about yourself. The truth of life that we seem to focus only on results – and don’t get me wrong, results are great – but more important is know that you have “done your damndest”. [ from a mythical gravestone in Tombstone, Arizona and quoted by Harry Truman in a speech]