Monday
Took the car for a drive on Tuesday
Petrol light was beaming by Wednesday
We were stuck queuing into Thursday and Friday and Saturday
Normality returned on Sunday
Petrol was low on Monday
Took the car for a drive on Tuesday
Petrol light was beaming by Wednesday
We were stuck queuing into Thursday and Friday and Saturday
Normality returned on Sunday
In another life I may have been the second coming of Craig David or Munya Chawawa. Apart from the part of England I live, South East, it appears that the petrol shortages are reducing in impact across the rest of the UK. Petrol, however, is not the only shortage. There have been shortages of Milk, Meat, Toys, Trees and if you’ve been in the market for a car or Playstation 5 this has been impacted by a global lack of semiconductor chips. So this links in well with this week’s topic, persistence, a whole lot of it appears needed for the weeks ahead!
Continuing firmly or obstinately in an opinion or course of action in spite of difficulty or opposition. That is the definition of persistence, if you skim read the definition you could easily confuse the definition with stubbornness. Which is actually defined as showing dogged determination not to change one's attitude or position on something, especially in spite of good arguments or reasons to do so. The key difference of the definitions is underlined, and that’s what fed into the second half of the blog title. When does persistence go from not persistent enough to being too persistent? So, one last definition to take in, a paradox can be defined as a contradictory statement or proposition which when investigated may prove to be well founded or true. High profile examples of persistence can be seen in the finger lickin restaurant KFC, Colonel Sanders KFC proposal was reportedly rejected over 1,000 times! After the 100th or 300th rejection, you could pretty reasonably suggest that he was alternating from perseverance to stubbornness, but it just goes to show perseverance has the ability to yield tremendous results. I’m sure many of us have now started to watch Squid Game, I have and really enjoyed it! The writer Hwang Dong-hyuk, wrote it in 2009 and faced the similar hurdles of several rejections for years prior to Netflix picking it up.
The common links in those 2 high profile examples were the several rejections experienced by both, and the persistence demonstrated by them despite that. It’s likely that Colonel Sanders had additional resources as he ventured into KFC in the latter stages of his life. That aside doesn’t change that persistence itself does not come at financial cost, it’s free. Rather the costs that are incurred are likely to come in the form of sacrifices. To commit more to your pursuits, priorities will have to be realigned. As delighted as I am to have a PS5, I’m not able to play it nowhere near as much, with my wants to exercise, write, read, study and binge watch Squid Game. I’ve felt the repercussions of that just over this weekend as I came to the unsettling realisation that I’ve regressed on the new Fifa 22. Professionally, one example where persistence is absolutely necessary, especially when entering into a new field of work is job hunting. It’s understandable to see how people can become discouraged when rejections rack up but giving up after several rejections is not what’s going to get us the role. As discussed in the group chat (this was prior to the Whatsapp outage) last week
“what’s one thing you’d unlearn?”
One of the boys said not giving up on the first try, which I strongly agree with and in truth, most time giving up on the 2nd,3rd,4th won’t do either. The key is to reframe ‘failure’ can this become a learning experience? That’s why I advocate seeking feedback where possible, there can be some real helpful responses provided to us. That feedback can help change our approach, sometimes in just a marginal way and producing an uptick in our fortunes.
Whilst I’ve just encouraged the need to persist and I encourage us to all question whether we’re being persistent enough, whether that be with our health, family, work and friends. There becomes a point where we can be too persistent to a detriment. There can be roles or companies that are so desirable to us that even in the face of countless rejections, and no meaningful feedback that as admirable as it would be to persist. Our time may best be spent elsewhere. Sure, persistence is free but time is not irreversible and opportunities may come and go in the pursuit of hurdles that we may not be in a position to overcome at this time. Then on a social level, I imagine that we’ve not remained close with all the friends with everyone befriended over the years. There are people who I’m sure we can no longer even call friend as they’ve shown that they’re beyond persisting the friendship with for one reason or the other. Then there’s the romantic level, so when I was reading up on the topic, this was the area that frequently came up on too much persistence. The person may not be playing hard to get, rather they’re simply not interested and this is more than sufficient reason to use your energy elsewhere, as there’s a good chance that you’ve now ventured from persistent to stubborn. It’s important to note that persistence does not mean sticking with what’s not right for you.
“Energy and persistence conquer all things.” — Benjamin Franklin
Behind most inspirational figures to us, whatever the industry or type of figure you can be certain that one of the things that have made them inspiring to you is their persistence. Persistence can be a fine line between stubbornness, but that should not deem it right to consider rejection as a be all or end all, what can be learnt from it? Persistence has the ability to improve all facets of our lives and that is one great incentive to want to further develop it. So when the next hurdle arises and giving up is seeming tempting remind yourself to think long term, be ready to be adaptable and think positively. In wrapping up, what are our Monday moods? Personally, this Monday I feel enthusiastic for the week ahead!
Temis2Pence