About Tenacity and Success

The Art of Persevering
Perseverance: persistence in doing something despite difficulty or delay in achieving success. Let me ask you this: do you have what it takes to succeed?

I know that this question may appear a little bold, maybe somewhat blunt, but let’s be honest with ourselves.

What qualities does it take to be, or to become successful?
What traits do successful people have in common, and what skills could you learn or embody to move forward in Your Life?

Success is no accident. It is hard work, perseverance, learning, studying, sacrifice and most of all, love of what you are doing or learning to do.
Pele

The Traits of Success
First of all, how do we define success, and what is ‘being successful’?
I suggest that the term and the definition of success is contingent.

In many cultures, success is translated in monetary value. It’s expressed in terms of the size or the brands of our possessions.

Worldly success is tied to wealth, status and power. We thrive higher and richer, disregarding qualities like respect, compassion and empathy.

If you bind success to the amount of acquisitions, how sustainable do you think success becomes?

Impermanence
Whatever we attain or accomplish in life—whether it be wealth, fame, status or power—is destined to fade and pass away. None of it is worth pinning our deepest hopes on; none of it is the source of lasting happiness. Lewis Richmond

In other words, if you measure success in terms of your titles or possessions you are heading for suffering. At least according to Buddha. Why? Because worldly success measured in terms of artefacts is impermanent. Buddha himself abandoned worldly success in search of something worthier of his dedication.

Re-think your beliefs about success.
Are your beliefs about success tied to power, wealth and fame?

Success redefined
What if we said that “success” is “the achievement of your potential”?

That success is living Your Life in a conscious altitude with a joyful attitude?
That success would be measured in terms of the time you spent living with compassion, with being present, with living in the now.
That success is the time you spent with loving rather than accumulating?

This would also mean that you live Your Life according to what you want to achieve. Would this require a paradigm shift in your beliefs system? What are your beliefs about success?

Authentic Success
Success is contingent on beliefs, and on the situation.

What I mean is that if you seek success outside of yourself, in terms of monetary value, position, power or fame, you are fragile – because it’s not permanent, it’s not authentic. The authentic ‘you’ gets lost in the process, and you risk to make dodgy friends along the way, because money is very powerful.

It’s accommodating to believe that Your Life is only successful if you have the means to prove it. But is it really? Does it make the monk AKA Buddha (né Siddhartha) less successful in life because he is poor?

Success is also contingent on the situation, because it depends on what you want to achieve.

This is where tenacity kicks in. Have you heard of the 3 P’s before? Passion, Persistence & Patience

Would you like to lead a life that represents the authentic you, and which allows you to be successful on your own terms? 

What do you want to achieve in Your Life?
What are you passionate about?
What would you do first thing tomorrow morning if you didn’t give a flying *bleep* (oops, excuse me) what the others said?
What skills do you need to develop to achieve your goals?
Who is the authentic you?
How much passion, persistence and patience are you willing to invest?

---