Selfalot

Daily Quote: “Persistence is the twin sister of excellence. One is a matter of quality; the other, a matter of time.”

Persistence is most probably the most important quality that you will need if you want to be a high achiever. But even if you just want to achieve your goals for a happier life then never giving up on your dreams is the key.

This is the one area where we mostly fail. We give up far too easily. One or two small hiccups in our plans and we start wondering why we ever considered this onerous task as a goal. What were we thinking?
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We had dreams of getting a trim figure and feeling healthier. But we gave up after a few weeks of fiddling around with a diet and half heartedly attending a gym. We stopped before we could start benefiting from the new life style.

What about the evening course we started on? We had always dreamt of learning French. So now was our chance. Two nights a week to class, got the books, started learning the first words. But as we carried on going the class started getting smaller and smaller.

Then you missed a lesson because a friend had a birthday and you went out with the group to celebrate. Then the next week you were too tired and suddenly you were missing class because you couldn’t keep up anymore.

Twenty sentences of French later and you gave up.. There went the idea of reading your favourite French authors in their original language. It got too hard. You didn’t want to give up your own time anymore. You had better things to do and in any case you always knew you were no good at languages.

Do you recognise yourself in this scenario? Have you started something that you really wanted to do and then when it got a bit hard to follow through on what was required, you bailed out, gave up or words to that effect?

Who said following your dreams was going to be easy? Yet that’s what we all expect. We want it all to come effortless. No pain. We want it to come to us in our sleep never mind any other method of learning.

There comes a time in any learning process where you overcome that painful first barrier. That’s when you have sufficient skills or knowledge for the process to become a little more fun.

That happens for instance while learning a language when you can actually start picking up the meaning in some sentences. That positive feedback is a huge encouragement. You’ve learnt enough to say hello to somebody and enquire of them how they are doing.

Then you add the next amount of work to your small success and it becomes easier again. Now you can also ask for directions and you feel that trip to Paris could just be on the cards soon. After all you can speak the language already.

Often you have to face obstacles that have been thrown at you by external factors. You might not be able to continue with French classes because you had an unexpected expense and you cannot afford the fees anymore.

Or it could be that the language college has to close down because of a lack of students in an economic down turn. These obstacles can be quite devastating. Here you are working hard, achieving some success and your opportunity is withdrawn.

Learn how to over come these obstacles in your path, whether they are the ones you are making for yourself or the ones circumstances serve up to you.