1) Persistence – Persistence is the fuel that gets done what needs to be done everyday. Persistence comes to us from two sources; either from passion or from persistence itself.
The motivation from persistence itself shows up when you are driven to continue to grow and learn and reach higher on the days when the motivation has waned.
Boldness is a necessary part of courage but it must be a boldness based on an intelligent assessment of the potential risks and rewards. The wonderful nature of boldness is that, properly directed, it builds the habit of courage in the person who practices it.
In my experience, any virtue translated into action leads almost invariably to positive results. This applies to integrity, persistence, courtesy, love and courage. I’ve always liked the advice of an old man to his grandson. “Act boldly and unseen forces will come to your aid.”
Today’s your day.
I’m convinced of it. It’s your day. And today you’re going to get up all your courage and just do what you’ve been aching to do.
Just before you begin taking the first actions in attacking your challenge, you might be shaking like a leaf. I don’t know.
But it’s at that moment, when you’re feeling the most frightened that you’ll be making your biggest strides. Because today, you’re not going to back down. You’re going to take a deep breath and go forward.
I remember Navy boot camp like it was yesterday. An event that occurred on my second day still causes me to pause when I reflect on it. You can tell a new soldier who has just arrived at boot camp from one who is about to graduate based upon the clothes and ribbons they wear.
It was clearly my second day, evidenced by what I was wearing. I was walking single file with my unit down a hall and a sailor who was just about to graduate passed us.
Fear is a reaction, courage is a decision. Perseverance is making the decision to have courage every day, day after day.
The late M. Scott Peck said that the absence of fear is not courage – the absence of fear is brain damage! No fear requires no courage – big fear requires big courage.
In today’s world, a successful life requires the courage to take risks, and the determination to persevere through all difficulties. Today, I’d like to share a dozen ideas for confronting your fears with courage.
Do you have a definite purpose that guides your ambitions, vision, and goals?
It doesn’t matter how you think you arrived here on this planet or under whose direction — the fact remains that each of us has specific talents and gifts that are uniquely coded within our own DNA.
As you go through life, you don’t just pick up things you like doing by chance. You discover what you’re good at because you were meant to discover it, just as you were meant to figure out what your fingers do, and how your elbows work.
Everyone wants to be physically healthy. You want to be mentally healthy as well. The true measure of “mental fitness” is how optimistic you are about yourself and your life.
In this article, you learn how to control your thinking in very specific ways so that you feel terrific about yourself and your situation, no matter what happens.
There are three basic differences in the reactions of optimists and pessimists. The first difference is that the optimist sees a setback as temporary, while the pessimist sees it as permanent.
I’ve got the power. It is a great day when you realize that you have the power to change your life, your perceptions of the world and your willingness to decide to succeed, no matter what.
It is shedding the layer of thoughts, ideas and perceptions that has held you back, and, instead embracing new ideas, new thoughts and beliefs about yourself and what you can be.
The decision to be free and independent — to truly declare and shout from the roof tops: “I am the only one who will decide what I want for me. I am the only person who has the power to think for me and to choose what thoughts I have. I can choose who I want to be.” That is true freedom.
Fear has been correctly identified with the acrostic False Evidence Appearing Real. The truth is that if we think something is to be feared, that perception becomes the cruelest form of reality.
A second-grade boy was overheard saying, “It’s easy to be brave when you’re not scared.” By the same token, it’s easy to talk about how to overcome fear when you have little to be afraid of. Fear is certainly real for most people and all of us face a fear of something – poverty, divorce, rejection, death, failure, speaking in public, being laughed at, etc.
Where will the records stop? In 1954 Roger Bannister ran a sub-four-minute mile and it ignited the athletic world. In 1994, Eamonn Coghlan of Ireland, at age 41, ran a sub-four-minute mile. Incredibly enough, Kip Keino of Ethiopia, at age 55, ran a 4.06 mile. The fastest mile run to date [when this column was originally written] is 3:43.13 accomplished by Hicham El Guerrouj of Morocco.
But back in 1954 more than 50 medical journals had published articles saying that the four-minute mile was not humanly possible. Doctors were warning athletes of the dire consequences to anyone who broke that unbreakable barrier.