Experience 6: The 8 ingredients of Persistence
What the Beatles, Walt Disney and Sir Richard Branson unknowingly taught us about success
If you could thrust history’s most successful people under a proverbial microscope, what are the first common traits you’d notice?
Talent and luck are two obvious answers. Yet they’re also the least useful, because neither can be perfectly replicated by the layman.
The most actionable takeaway is their persistence.
Can you remember the last time you should have had confidence and faith in something you wanted… only to give up at the first sign of opposition, negativity or trouble?
Those who enjoy extraordinary success are not those who escape the storms - it’s those who weather them. Here’s just a tiny example:
Walt Disney: The legendary creative force behind the world’s most loved animations almost went bankrupt with his first animation company! A news editor also fired him because he supposedly “lacked imagination.” It’s estimated he was turned down 302 times before he got financing for creating Disney World.
Richard Branson: As the billionaire mogul of Virgin, even he’s had his share of failures. Remember Virgin Cola or Virgin credit cards? Probably not! He’s lost hundreds of millions of dollars but has not let fear of failure or negativity stop him.
The Beatles: Many record labels rejected them. In one of the famous rejections, the label said, “guitar groups are on the way out” and “the Beatles have no future in show business.” Soon after, the Beatles signed with EMI, Beatlemania hit the United States by storm and they became one of the most prolific bands in history.
How to cultivate a persistent state of mind in 8 steps
According to Napoleon Hill, you will program your mind for persistence when you have:
1. A Definiteness of Purpose: knowing what one wants is the first and, perhaps, the most important step toward the development of persistence. Strong motivations can overcome almost any difficulty.
2. Desire: pursuing the object of your heart’s desire certainly makes it easier to obtain and maintain undying persistence!
3. Self-Reliance: belief in your ability to carry out your “organized plans” will encourage you to follow through with persistence.
4. Definiteness of Plans: “organized plans”, no matter how weak or impractical, encourage persistence.
5. Accurate Knowledge: knowing that your plans are solid, based on experience or observation of success, encourages persistence. Conversely, if you just make “guesses” versus basing your plans on “knowing”, you’re going to destroy any shred of persistence within you.
6. Cooperation: sympathy, understanding and “harmonious cooperation” with others will develop persistence.
7. Willpower: concentrating your strength of focus on building plans for getting everything you desire can also lead to fostering persistence.
8. Habit: Persistence is the direct result of habit. Your mind absorbs and becomes a part of your daily habits. In essence, it becomes what it feeds upon. For example, FEAR can be effectively overcome by forced repetition of acts of courage.
Whats your most inspiring story of persistence?
Train yourself to vibrate with pure empowerment and positivity.
There are certain techniques you can use to recondition your mind for persistence, positivity and free-flowing creativity. You’ll find a complete curriculum of these in the full Project:Yourself course - from subconscious visualization sessions to eye-opening workbook mind exercises.
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