How to Persist Like a High Performer

I almost gave up on writing this blog post but since it was on persistence I didn't feel like I could give up.

When talking about persistence, of course, my first thought goes to the famous quote by Calvin Coolidge:

“Nothing in the world can take the place of persistence. Talent will not; nothing is more common than unsuccessful men with talent. Genius will not; unrewarded genius is almost a proverb. Education will not; the world is full of educated derelicts. Persistence and determination alone are omnipotent. The slogan Press On! has solved and always will solve the problems of the human race.”

Just like there is no courage without fear, there is no persistence without struggle. Simply measuring how long someone stays at a task does not measure persistence, because if the task is easy or fun continuing does not require persistence. Persistence only exists when there are struggles, obstacles, or setbacks and we continue despite them.

Self esteem is one factor that can predict whether or not we will persist. If our self-esteem is high and we believe in our ability to figure things out, then when something goes wrong or there is a setback, we can look at the situation, believe we will figure it out and make adjustments and continue on. But if our self-esteem is low, then it is more likely that we will give up when we come up against some challenges.

Here is the high performance approach to persistence:

• Know what we want. Being clear about our goals is the first step to high performance. Having clarity is the first habit of high performance habits. If we are not clear about what we want, it is very hard to stay committed to that fuzzy image we have in our head. But when we are clear about what we want, what it looks like, and how it will feel, it is much easier to persist when the going gets tough.
• Know who else is counting on us. Sometimes when we are only thinking about ourselves it is easy to quit. However, when we are thinking about how others are depending on us, that fuels us to heights that we could not reach if it were just for us. The story of the USS Indianapolis is a great illustration of this. When the ship was hit by a torpedo, over a thousand men went into the water. They were in the water for nearly 5 days and nights. They were suffering from dehydration, getting attacked by sharks, their shipmates dying from exposure, sharks attacks, or whatever. Everyone in the water felt like giving up at one time. But, the ones that survived did so only because their buddies were asking about their families back home. It didn't matter if it was their parents, their wives, or their children. The ones that survived did so because they needed to survive to get back to their families. Not for themselves but for their families. So ask yourself, who is counting on you to keeping going? To not give up, to strive, struggle and achieve or to be a role model. Your family, your kids, your team?
• Touch our goal everyday. We have to fuel our enthusiasm for achieving the goal, accomplishing the task, or building the new habit. Doing all this requires hard work and there will be times when we feel like giving up. When we fuel our enthusiasm on a daily basis, we will be less likely to throw in the towel when the going gets hard, or get stuck on a problem.
• Think about what challenges we might encounter. If we take some time to think about what might get in our way, then you won’t be caught off guard when they occur. Create a "If this, then that" statement. If this happens, then I will do that. It's a contingency plan. If we are trying to stick our running schedule and it is running, what is the contingency plan. Do we run in the rain, run on a treadmill indoors, jump rope that day? By coming up with the plan before we need to execute, we can think clearly about the options available, as opposed to thinking about what we feel like doing in the moment.
• Schedule it. When will we do the actions required. If we have a sales goal, when will we make the phone calls, send out the emails, etc? What days of the week, what time of the time, for how long? In high performance, we talk about "block time". That is the time when we are singularly focused on one action. For example, I have "block time" scheduled each week to write this blog. It is Wednesday at 9:00am. When Wednesday at 9:00am comes around I am writing a blog post. I am not checking my email, looking at my phone, checking my social media to see how long likes my last post got. I am writing, that's it. Let's setup our schedules with "block times" for when we are singularly focused on one task. When we do that we will be amazed at just how much gets done.
• Find or create a support team. Depending on what we are working on, this can be crucial. Having a support system with us can be the difference maker. If you don't have one, get one. Knowing that people are with us, helping us, removing distractions, cheering us on, could be the difference between achieving or stopping short of our goal.  When I was going through my most recent Certification training as a Certified High Performance Coach, I enlisted the help of my wife and daughter. It is an intense training program. I knew that it might be after the dinner hour when I was done for the day. Since I am in charge of dinner, I asked my wife and daughter if they could be in charge of dinner that week. They said yes and took charge of planning, shopping and preparing the dinners for the entire week. It was a huge help to me and made our experience that week a good one instead of a challenging one.
• Do the work. I wasn't sure if I needed to put this step in, because obviously we can't get the goal if we don't do the work. Wishing, dreaming, manifesting will only get us so far. We actually have to do the work. We can plan our workouts, buy the right clothes, watch the videos so we know what to do, but at some point we actually have to do it. Enough said.
• Track, review, and revise. When we track our efforts, and track our results, we have something to analyze. Then we can figure out what is working and what is not working. Did we schedule "block time" for our projects? Did we schedule enough time? Or is the reason we didn't complete it because we got distracted during that time? Did we stick to the block time? If not, what happened? How can we improve our efforts or results next week? What went right? What went wrong? Where did things get off track? By analyzing our efforts and our results we will be able to make the kinds of adjustments that will make the biggest difference.

When we are in the process of working on our goals and are finding it a struggle to remain committed, go through the steps outlined above. I know it will help improve our persistence and keep us moving forward towards our goals.