Do you have days where being an adult is just really hard?  Do you want to just sit at the kids table and color?  Me too!  Lets go!   Just for a little while and then back to it.

Perseverance is the act of sticking to something until it is finished.  Failing and getting back up.  Working through all the details to arrive at the desired outcome.  Sometimes perseverance is waiting, actively waiting for the next door of opportunity to open or the page to turn to embark on the next chapter of our lives.  Often actively patiently waiting for this new chapter to start is quite difficult but well worth it.  We have to use perseverance in many places in our lives, from the time we are infants learning to crawl thru our 57th wedding anniversary.

Knowledge: How do we learn? From practicing theory, from experience and from others. We learn from trying and failing, then starting again. We can read books, articles, and papers to gain theory and ideas, but most often we require the hands on experience to fully gain the knowledge we need to see our projects through.  Perseverance is getting back on the horse, but this time you know what didn’t work before.  You can carry the knowledge you learned from your previous attempts to apply to the next try.

Self- Confidence: Pushing forward and then reflecting on the distance of where we once were and where we are now.  This builds our confidence in ourselves.  Sometimes we notice as we go along that the more we do something or the more we learn, the more confidence we have in our abilities. Some of us need a moment of retrospect to see how far we have come in our learning process to see how much we actually have learned. The more we learn about something the more self doubt diminishes, and the more confidence we build.

Character: Perseverance builds character.  I am a firm believer in the idea that we have gone through everything in our lives to make us who we are today. Along the way we have learned ethics and morals by taking note of what habits and behaviors we do and don’t like in ourselves and others with whom we have had to tolerate. Hopefully adapting the habits and behaviors that we find complimentary to our character.

All of life’s lessons grow us into the people we are meant to be, leveling us up to be able to accomplish the next set of goals in our lives.  Many times we must revisit lessons to learn them fully.  Most times we need to learn these lessons to open us up to new and exciting opportunities that will escalate our position in society and expand our self awareness.