Friday 24 August 2012

Perseverance - A feisty thing!

I recently was working on an artwork on my laptop. After completing 75% of the work, the application hung and it showed one of the most dreadful notifications - "Application not responding"! All that work down the drain. Those hours of effort fighting against the cramps in your hand, in vain. I agree that the work I was doing is of no significance. But it was something of my interest. And when it comes to activities that interest me, I carry it out with some dedication. I believe most of you will find this feeling quite mutual. I spent the proceeding hour in absolute anger. Well, I am quite sensible, I should have saved my work. I am still quite angry at the application which failed. But, mainly I am angry at myself. Anyway, I moved on. I restarted my work from scratch and I made sure I saved my work more often. So, I guess I've learnt my lesson.

After that event I realised that many a times there are certain bumps that occur. Showing your frustation is completely justified. According to me, we have to show our anger. Its best to get it out of our systems. Well people deal with that part in different ways. I just show my frustration until I run out steam. Others might resort to some sort of meditation. And some others might just try to divert themselves by doing some other work. This part is not in my line of focus right now. I want to think about what follows the annoyance. People go about the situation in basically two manners: some give up and take up another activity; others give the operation another try. The later shows perseverance!

Lets look at the people who persevere and go for the second attempt. Not all of them will succeed. The ones who succeed are the ones who would have learnt from their mistakes and would have gone about the exercise in a better, well thought out manner.

The ones who fail are of two types. The first type, they would have learnt from their mistakes and taken a different path, but they still wouldn't have reached their destination. But there is a chance that their new path could have taken them closer. So, on consecutive trials by learning from their previous trials, they will eventually reach their goal. I call this Practical Perseverance.
The second type, (or as I like to call it the good-for-nothing) are those who go about the task in the same manner as they did in the first trial. These guys will obviously fail because they repeat their mistakes. I call this The Good-for-nothing Perseverance.

Now, for all those who go about the Good-for-nothing Perseverance, "S.F x2":
S- Stop what you are doing
F- Forget everything about your method because obviously its pointless
S- Start again from scratch
F- Focus through the entire process. The key is to get rid of distractions!
Its a recipe for "Stalled Success"! Haha! Hopefully we don't need to come across it.

Now for those on Practical perseverance. I'm sure its agreeable that it gets terribly irritating! To go for it again and again, thinking every step over, and end up failing. I hate to accept it. But, its because of lack of focus. The only solution is to concentrate harder. And of course, S.F x2 will help.

Just go for it. By persevering in the right manner, you'll reach your goal! We can do it! I know you have heard this many a times before. But its very apt to end this post by quoting Edison:


"If I find 10,000 ways something won't work, I haven't failed. I am not discouraged, because every wrong attempt discarded is another step forward."

1 comment:

  1. Makes me think, I need to practice this more. I feel now that i give up way too easily, each time i start writing something or drawing something, one tiny smudge and i want to chuck it. I should work on changing that.

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