Reaching your goals in life and achieving success.   Is perseverance the key factor?

By Dennis Fisher

Many people believe that perseverance, the ability to keep on trying, even though the odds may be stacked against you, is the most important quality you need to reach your goals in life.

But is this really so?

The well-known idiom, “If at first you don’t succeed, try, try and try again”, are words of advice and encouragement used constantly by teachers, motivational speakers, sports coaches and everyone who advocates persistence as the most important quality in reaching one’s goals.

How valuable are these words of advice?     There is no question that perseverance is an admirable quality.   Many people have reached their goals by refusing to give up, even though the obstacles they faced seemed insurmountable.   They had the courage and tenacity to struggle on.

Perseverance and persistence is certainly a quality that can prove very valuable.  But not in all circumstances.  Very often perseverance  involves elements of stubbornness and obstinacy. It often leads to inflexibility and rigidity in one’s thinking.  There is often a complete absence of creativity.

It is not often that one receives valuable advice from a comedian, but the old-time comedian and film actor, W.C. Fields, was certainly very astute  when he made the following comment about persistent, pointless effort:

“If at first you don’t succeed, try again. Then quit. No point in making a damn fools of yourself…”

Sometimes people carry on blindly pursuing the goals they have set for themselves. They do so regardless of whether or not these goals are realistic and attainable. They religiously follow the same routines and identical procedures over and over again in the vain hope that they will eventually be rewarded for their tenacity and perseverance.

For every idiom that expresses a particular point of view, there is another with a completely opposite meaning.  When applied to different circumstances it can be  just as valid.

The phrase “To knock one’s head against the wall” expresses the idea, very graphically, that it is a complete waste of time to continue doing something over and over in the same manner if it is not bringing you success

It is important for you to examine your own goals and decide whether they are realistic and attainable.  It’s all very well to struggle on if there are positive signs there is  a  chance  of you eventually achieving success.   But it’s futile to do so if your goals are  unrealistic. In certain circumstances persistence and perseverance  can be completely inappropriate and even counter-productive.

This applies to every area of human activity.   The following example may be exaggerated, but it does illustrate the point.

Let us presume you are madly keen on sports and anxious to achieve fame as a successful sportsman.  But although you are athletically built, you happen to be small, slim and very small boned. It would be quite pointless and ridiculous to set the completely unrealistic goal for yourself of becoming a champion sumo wrestler.

Not only is it important for you to examine your own goals and decide whether they are, in fact, realistic and attainable, it’s also necessary to constantly re-assess and re-valuate the methods and techniques you are using to reach these goals.

Make an objective assessment whether the path you are travelling to reach your goals is indeed the most suitable one to follow.  If it not, you will have to choose an alternative route.

Decisions of this nature do not require persistence.   They require a completely different quality – the ability to think creatively!

If you were given the opportunity to choose one quality that would be of the greatest benefit to you in achieving your goal in life, I believe the ability to think creatively – not perseverance  - is the one you should choose.

Creativity, I firmly  believe, is the key factor in success.

If the methods and techniques you are using to achieve your goal are not succeeding, then start thinking creatively.   Try something different.

How do you go about trying something different?     By being original, innovative and creative in your thinking.   Creativity and doing something slightly different to the way others are doing it has been the key to success in every field.   It makes no difference whether you are involved in business, sport, entertainment or any other field.   Your style has to be distinctive and different to stand out from the crowd.

The ability to look at a problem from a completely different, entirely new and original perspective and find a creative solution bears the stamp - not of genius and certainly not of persieverance – but creative thinking.

People who have achieved marked success in business often do so because of their ability to make quick, innovative decisions.  This ability to do so is not the result of an intuitive, gut- feeling. It is a skill they have developed.

Creativity and creative thinking is not a talent that some people are fortunate to be born with.  It is a skill that can be acquired.  There are ways this can be done.

Perseverance  is certainly not a quality that should be disparaged.  In certain circumstances it  can be a very valuable attribute. But if, after trying over and over again to reach your goals without success, think seriously about following a different route.

You need not necessarily abandon your goals.  Adjust and modify them to meet the circumstances. Learn how to develop your dormant powers of creativity.  Start using creative, original and resourceful techniques to achieve these modified goals you have set yourself.

Use creative imagination to visualize the goal you have set yourself as a completely different destination. Devise ingenious methods to reach your goal.  Regard the innovative ideas you have conjured up in your mind as a far more efficient means of transport.

Once you have made the necessary adjustments to your thinking, the success you have dreamed  will soon be within your grasp.