Persistence
“Everything
sucks some of the time.”
Mark
Manson (in Big Magic by Elizabeth Gilbert, p.150; Riverhead Books, 2015)
Mark
Manson is a blogger, and the purpose behind this statement is that if you want
something with all your heart, if you want to know your true purpose in life, you’ll
persist in the face of failure and setbacks. For example, the athletes who work
their entire lives to get to the Olympics. The 15-year-old Russian skater we
just saw in the Beijing Olympics who was sidelined for taking a banned
substance, then allowed to skate is a case in point. What a horrifying
experience, after all that, to fall on her first attempt. Athletes who rise to
that level of competition get up before daylight, drive to a frozen rink, and
practice for hours—every single day. They put up with sore muscles, twisted
ankles, sleep deprivation, dietary restrictions, lack of social life and much
more because they are whole-heartedly dedicated to their sport. None of that is
fun to them—it’s the sucky part of the job of being a professional skater. You
don’t get to stand on the podium and bite the gold metal without having done
that part. (What is that about anyway?)
Most of
us, myself included, are bone-chillingly afraid of rejection in any of the
myriad forms it takes. If you are a writer who is not willing to receive
rejection letters from publishing houses, and scathing reviews, then you are
unlikely to ever publish. An architect friend of mine talked one of my sons out
of pursuing a career in that field because of the number of rejections he had
received. He said, you put in weeks of work only to have the client say, “I don’t
like it,” and you’re either fired or right back to the drawing board. It’s hard
for us to be told that we aren’t good enough no matter what the task may be.
The fact
is that “everything sucks some of the time.” If you truly are passionate
about something, you must persist through the parts you don’t like. That’s
small scale, as well as large scale—for instance, I’m trying to recover full
range of motion in my right knee, so I go to the gym three times a week. I
complain all the way there, the whole time I’m there, and all the way home—but I
do it anyway. It hurts. It’s a pain in the … but it’s necessary.
No matter what your goal,
no matter what you want to do with your life, no matter what age you are,
persistence is essential to success. What the Harvard psychologists call “grit”
is the single most important determinant of success in any endeavor—not innate
intelligence, not body type, not socioeconomic status. If you want something
with all your heart, you persist—whether it’s making it to the Olympics or managing
your weight or making an A in chemistry. If you want to determine your true purpose
in life, ask yourself this: “What am I willing to suffer for, to face failure
for, to experience rejection for? What do I want badly enough to persist
through the sucky parts?” Then go and do that.
In the Spirit,
Jane
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