John Hersey Leadership Blog

Failure is often the result of little persistence.  Strong health, permanent happiness, substantial wealth, effective teamwork, or wild success, are not easy goals to achieve, even when you avidly devour hundreds of books on these topics.  The majority of sudden success stories have years of history of trials and errors behind them, and almost all natural talent has long hours of disciplined work supporting it, in fact, this is why it looks so natural.

The secret to success is to learn its systems, habits, and principles, the ones that are acquired through discipline and endless persistence.  As the saying goes, ‘Practice makes the master’.

It is a common mistake to think that successful people were born brain privileged.  The conclusion that many arrive to is that they were born from parents with superior genes, thus they were born with great talent, high intelligence, and natural gifts.  However, we know there are people who are extremely talented, almost geniuses, but never developed their capabilities or made something worthy with them; you may even know some individuals like this yourself.  Some people simply give up at the doors of success, and they repeat the same story over and over again only to get discouraged every time they are about to reach their dreams.

Several studies have shown that Nobel Prize winners have an average intelligence, as well as superior levels of tenacity and persistence.  These leaders hang in there while their colleagues move on to pursue more promising research routes.  They are live proof of this unequivocal truth: No one is a loser until he quits trying.

It is not easy to stick to your beliefs and efforts in the face of a long and bumpy journey; the secret is to break your big task into smaller and manageable ones, helping you stay focused and active until you reach a new milestone.

It is like Thomas Edison said after his factory and all his life work were eaten by fire on December 1914, “There is great value in disaster.  All our mistakes are burned up.  Thank God we can start anew.”  Less than a month later, Edison presented the first phonograph.

So, no, don’t take this article’s title literally, don’t pray for disaster in your life; this would just be a sign of ungratefulness. The goal was to grab your attention intensely to be able to communicate such an important message, however, consciously and regularly ask for opportunities to test your faith in yourself and in your persistence, because this is when you will really discover what you are capable of, it will make you grow, it will make you a leader, and a part of history.

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This entry was posted on Wednesday, December 30th, 2009 at 4:37 pm and is filed under Leadership.You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.