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Life Coaching by Kathy O'Connor
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Persistence Pays

In the previous article named, Change That Will Make a Difference, we explored the idea that the power to change anything lies deep within us, and that we can awaken this power starting right now. I mentioned that positive thinking plays a big part in bringing about change though on its own is not enough and that the first step in turning your life around is by remembering that –YOUR PAST DOES NOT EQUAL YOUR FUTURE. What matters is not yesterday though what you do right now. So change starts right here, right now in this moment. Bringing about change is something that needs to be worked at. Most people try out different ways to make change and if it hasn’t worked they throw in the towel and give up and go back to their old way of working. The problem with this is that if we continue to do what we have always done we will get the results we have always got. It would be an awful tragedy to settle for the old when something new is possible to achieve.

To get a different result we need to be persistent and try out lots of new ways and to continue trying out new ways until we find something that works. If what you have tried doesn’t work just let it go and try out something different. The key to success is to decide on exactly what you want and then to take some action each day towards your goal even when it doesn’t look as if it’s working. The best example of success that I can think of here is Thomas Edison. Edison was the man who invented the light bulb. His friends and collages laughed at him and thought him to be crazy because he spent so much time, money and effort with no success. Edison’s did not feel bad about his lost attempts and his response to them was that ‘I have found 2000 ways of how not to do it’. This is just a brilliant way of looking at things. Failure did not come into Edison’s thinking, nor did he bow to the sneers of his comrades. He had an idea which he believed in and he used his personal power to continue exploring new ways of doing things until he achieved his goal. Persistence paid off and he became a very rich and famous man. How many people do you think would have settled for trying 2000 ways to do something and kept going? Very few. I think most people would not get passed twenty or thirty times, yet this is sometimes what it takes to succeed.

If you take a look at the most successful people in history you will find this common thread. They would not accept no. They would not allow anything to stop them from making their goal a reality. Every time we do something we have the opportunity to learn from it and to find a better way to do it next time. Tony Robbins states: No Problem is Permanent. No problem affects our entire life. This too shall pass if you continue to
take massive, positive, constructive action.

Even though things can look terrible right now there are many things to be thankful for. Take a look around you and see what those things are. It could be the partner and family that you have, the friends that you have, the home that you live in, the fact that you have all your senses or the fact that you can breathe fresh air. Notice those things that you can be thankful for right now. Remind yourself to decide on what you want and to focus on the solution rather than the problem. Consistent action with pure persistence in pursuing your goals will ultimately give you what you want, and you must get rid of the idea that there is no solution.

This all makes so much sense, doesn’t it? So why don’t more people follow their dreams and just do it? The answer to this is that they have been shut down by fear of failure. There is something about failure that I would like to tell you and I will do this in the next article. So for now start to focus on the things that you want rather than on the things that you don’t want and start to write out the action steps that are required to achieve your goal. Remember that persistence is something that will give you what you want.

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