The Power of Perseverance
Perseverance requires passion. To succeed you have to keep pushing no matter what life throws at you.
perseverance - noun
per·se·ver·ance | \ ˌpər-sə-ˈvir-ən(t)s
Continued effort to do or achieve something despite difficulties, failure, or opposition.
Perseverance isn’t a word that gets used as often as it should these days. Which is odd, because in today’s heightened climate of uncertainty, I believe we need perseverance more than ever.
If you look at a list of the top 100 most popular hashtags on Instagram, perseverance is nowhere to be found. You have to go all the way down to number 49 to find anything close to it: #motivation - and that’s really not the same thing.
Motivation is crucial and you need it to persevere, but it doesn’t capture the same sense of overcoming obstacles and pushing forward in the face of opposition.
Perseverance requires passion and even a level of obsession.
What sets the brands at the top of their fields apart from the pack is their ability to be passionately obsessed about what they do and what they’re selling.
I like doing business with brands that have a true obsessive affinity for what they do.
Like so many things, it starts with leadership. When the leadership is passionate, it extends to the rest of the organization.
Brands that obsess stand out. Pure and simple.
Take Apple, for example. When you walk into an Apple store, there’s a feeling of pride from every employee. Everything is always immaculate and working perfectly.
Lego is another great example. Every detail is taken into consideration in both design and execution. When you walk into the Lego store, you won’t find a bored teenager playing on their phone, you’ll find happy, enthusiastic, and passionate people who love what they do.
Disney is the same way. From their stores to their parks to their television and film studios, they fill their ranks with truly passionate people who are obsessed with Disney and obsessed with doing incredible work.
These brands will weather any storm because every employee is passionately relentless in their pursuit of excellence.
They’re obsessed.
To be obsessed, you have to be able to persevere. It’s a lot of hard work. You can’t take the easy route.
When you love what you do, you can’t fail. Because you refuse to give up. Normal people give up. People who are passionate are insane.
To truly succeed, you have to keep pushing, over a sustained period of time. And it’s really hard. If you don’t really love it, you’re going to give up. A rational person would give up.
“The ones who were successful loved what they did so they could persevere, you know, when it got really tough. And the ones that didn’t love it quit because they’re sane, right? Who would want to put up with this stuff if you don’t love it? You’ve got to love it and you’ve got to have passion.” – Steve Jobs
Passion paired with perseverance is what makes these companies so successful.
Going forward, we will see these types of brands pulling even further away from the pack and going on the offensive while others are positioning themselves defensively. Those other brands aren’t as likely to weather the storms because they’re not insanely passionate about what they do.
If you’re not insanely passionate about what you do, that’s fine. You can still be happy, just don’t expect to do the best work of your life.
But if you are insanely, passionately obsessed with what you do, you’ll be performing at optimal levels and find yourself doing things you would never have otherwise thought possible.
If you’re in the right spot, going in the right direction for the right reason, success is imminent. In any area of your life. If you don’t have some part of your life that you’re passionate about, you’re missing out.
Check your pulse for passion and perseverance!
How do you know? Try these five things:
1. Are you jumping out of bed wanting to finish that project 80% of the time?
2. Are you dreading Sunday nights or excited for what Monday might bring?
3. Do you find yourself talking about your career and/or work to friends and family?
4. Are you 100% invested or do you still have your CV posted out there?
5. Are you constantly thinking about what you do or you simply leave it at the office 100% of the time?