It is nearly impossible today to get out of bed and face the day with 100% enthusiasm and conviction. Even on the best days, shit gets in the way. Some days, I absorb it like a sponge, while others I repel it with all my might and let it roll off of my back.
The ebb and flow of that balance requires a conscious persistence or does it?
Is perseverance innate or learned?
If it is learned, I don’t ever remember it being taught. If it is innate, I have the genetics of perseverant gold embedded in my DNA by the unwavering will of my grandparents and father.
Science will tell you its learned but I choose to believe it is both. When you persevere at a young age, you do without knowing you are so something innate drives that urge to persist despite setbacks and struggles.
With age comes wisdom, critical thinking, and the ability to understand the broader concepts of mindsets, perseverance is clearly developed through a pattern of learned behaviors, observations, experiences, and challenges.
Where does resilience enter the picture?
Resilience is your friend pounding on the front door trying to wake you out of a dead sleep to get your ass up and moving when all you want to do is pull the covers over your head.
One cannot persevere without resilience.
If we could, our time on this planet would require absolutely no effort. Everything would just happen exactly the way you planned it. Graduate with honors – check, make a million bucks – check, score every opportunity – check, and build the perfectly infallible life – checkmate!
How is your PR treating you?
Resilience enables persistence and creates an energy that endures through the largest of challenges. Without resilience, prevailing is an accident. Like walking on thin ice hoping not to fall through. Resilience doesn’t make the ice thicker, it creates the belief that it is.
Perseverance keeps you taking one trepid step at a time knowing you might fall through at any moment. Resilience leaves you knowing if you do, you have a plan to get out. You might be cold and wet, but you get out and move on.
Just like the ole wise tale of The Tortoise and the Hare. The tortoise prevailed because it persisted in taking one step at a time. As they say, ‘Slow and steady wins the race.’
If you trip and fall do you lay on the ground writhing in agony, or get the hell up and try again?
I am not sure when in my life I understood or could recognize what perseverance and resilience even looked like but reflecting on my experiences, I relied on both very heavily to prevail in my accidental and purposeful endeavors.
How is your PR holding up?
Today, I know definitively with 100% certainty that I would not be where I am without the benefit of both. There are countless times in my life when pulling the covers over my head seemed the only way out, and yet I kept slugging along.
My PR has served me well. It laid the foundation that created opportunities in each of my endeavors and has not let me down.
Not even once.
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