Key To Success: Perseverance

He that can quietly endure overcomes. --English ProverbThere are all sorts of factors which contribute to success, but there is one that is often more important than all the others...perseverance.

I have begun and ended this article with a proverb which points out the value of being able to persevere, but for most of us, one old saying comes to mind, "All things come to him who waits."

The problem with that particular version is that it implies that simply waiting for success to happen is all that is required. While the occasional miracle does happen, most successes are the result of action. For most of us, success, when it comes with will be a reward for our effort, faith, and perseverance.

The world is replete with stories of those who "succeeded" only after years of trial and effort. Thomas Alva Edison, one of the foremost inventors of the 20th century is famous for his invention of the electric light bulb, among many other things. However, even Mr. Edison never hesitated to point out that the thing that made him famous occurred after years of not being successful (which IS different from failing). He even stated that he found the way to make the light bulb work only after learning several ways to NOT make them work.

Very few "successful" entrepreneurs, salespeople, network marketers, and today's internet marketers can say that they achieved success without trial and error...lots of error. IN fact, many will be more than happy to admit that their success came about after long periods of time in which they managed to do some pretty foolish things and waste a lot of time and money.

However, two major points also come out of these stories...they learned from their mistakes and accepted the setbacks as part of the tuition they had to pay to learn their craft, and they did not give up.

Even in my own life, there was a ten year period between my first half-hearted attempts at creating my own business, and my first real income. There was another five year period in which I grew my business in spare moments until I began to make enough income that I could quit my job and actually live comfortably off the income I was able to generate.

Of course, I'm hard headed and insisted on re-inventing the wheel. Two close friends of mine reached the viable income level in three years, and both became millionaires in five years, simply by sticking with the basics of their individual businesses and the simplest tenets of network marketing. They were friends with everyone, and handed out a pamphlet to everybody they met.

It's easy to look at that paragraph and either be discouraged that it can take so long, or to become excited that it can happen that fast. To put things in perspective as far as perseverance is concerned; one of the gentlemen I spoke of was in his mid 40's when he began to pursue this particular quest. He was nearing 50 when he began receiving monthly checks in excess of $100,000 a month. It would have been easy in the first year or two of this enterprise for him to have quit and just chalk it up to another program that wasn't any good...or accuse himself of being a failure. However, he realized the value and potential of the program he was involved in and knew that if he could just put brochures in the hands of enough people, he would be able to find many like himself.

As I said, it took him three years to find those people, and two more years of growing this group until the point where he was being repaid to the tune of $100,000+ each month. It wasn't his skills that landed him there, but neither did he achieve all this by waiting for people to ring his doorbell and hand him money. To him, every day was a chance to open new doors to the future for himself and those who felt as he did.

Don't ever give up.

For every door that shuts, ten will open. -- Philippine Proverb