Creative Thinking: Perseverance, a useful tool

Are you a persevering person? Ask yourself how your course of action is in the face of difficulties, when you have little or no indication of success. Do you keep on trying or do you easily feel discouraged? Feeling discouraged is surely the most common path toward failure because it encourages you to give up. You believe that results should be immediate, or almost so. “I prepared myself, you say, so I must succeed, “now.”
Do you know who Abraham Lincoln was? What do you know about him? You will certainly answer that he was a great American president. One definition given of him says that “He successfully led his country through its greatest constitutional, military and moral crisis — the American Civil War — preserving the Union while ending slavery, and promoting economic and financial modernization.” So? Well, did you know that he lost eight prior elections before being elected President in 1860? What would have happened if he had quit after any of his previous failures? His life would have certainly been quite different, and he would not have been able to fulfill his destiny, to do good to his country and to his fellow human beings.
You, too, have so much to gift others with, although you seem not be aware of it. You might feel you don’t have special talents, you might believe that you don’t possess that “something” that makes an individual successful.
But you are wrong. Every single person has “something” special, different, something that only he or she can give others and receive fulfillment from it.
Even if you dare to dream “high,” to look up at the stars and wish to fly there, you do not have the patience and the perseverance to follow your vision, to prepare yourself and to give it time. You forget that the seed does
not sprout in a minute or in a day. It needs to allow the natural process to unfold before becoming a beautiful flower. Nevertheless, you are convinced that you should get what you want right away, right now. If you don’t, you lose interest, you convince yourself that whatever you are seeking is not worth your effort, that — after all — you don’t really want it. You abandon the path you had chosen and follow another dream, and maybe another, and another... You might remember the old Aesop fable about a fox who — wanting to eat a bunch of grapes but being unable to grasp them because they were hanging too high, it walked away saying “They are not ripe, anyway!”
Many people, especially nowadays, have learned that perseverance is not a positive trait. They feel they don’t have enough time to pursue their goals, if these cannot be achieved quickly. Once upon a time, when the animals were complaining about human beings robbing them of their possessions (the sheep’s wool, the hen’s eggs, the cow’s milk etc...), the snail proudly said: “I have something they cannot rob me of. I HAVE TIME!"
Animals are great examples for human beings, as they behave according to “nature.” It is said that — thanks to its perseverance — the snail, too, reached Noah’s Ark! Had it been conditioned by the other animals’ faster pace, the snail would have certainly given up without even trying.
Finally, here is the summary for a good recipe for success:

• 1. Be sure of the goal you want to reach.
• 2. Proceed without allowing dangerous doubts to jeopardize your endeavor.
• 3. Always be aware that your goal can be attained. If you believe that your dream is only a castle built on the clouds, unreachable, without strong foundations, you will never be successful.
• 4. Even if you think that your goal is very difficult to reach, if you trust your capabilities, you won’t remain on the lower step of the ladder.
• 5. Consider the snail as an inspiration. Perseverance and trust are the main ingredients in this useful recipe for a more successful life.

One last word: I have just remembered reading, some time ago, an interview to a singer who had become an overnight success. To the question, “How have you been able to become an overnight success?” the singer answered, “It took me seventeen years of preparation!"
 

— Elsa Franco Al Ghaslan, a Saudi English instructor and published author (in Italy), is a long-time scholar of positive thinking.

E-mail: elsafranco.algh@yahoo.com
Blog: recreateyourlifetoday.blogspot.com