“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.” ―Calvin Coolidge, 30th US President

Nothing happens in a day. it takes time to prepare a sumptuous supper. All great leaders have stories of failure to share. But their biggest life mantra has been to never give up and to keep trying, keep pushing. They achieved the unachievable with their imagination and persistence. Failures and setbacks did not prevent them from working towards their goals. 

It is a myth that extraordinary people have achieved success because things worked in their favor or due to luck. Such notions are wrong and unfair. Extraordinary people stand out because they make things happen. They strive hard tirelessly to make things fall into place and to accomplish their goals. While ordinary people blame circumstances, extraordinary people work with what they have, and from where they are, to achieve success. John C. Maxwell once remarked, “Water boils at 212 degrees, but at 211 degrees, it is still just hot water.  One extra degree, an increase of less than one-half of one percent, can make the difference between a pot of languishing liquid and a bubbling cauldron of power. One degree can create a full head of steam — enough power to move a train weighing tons.  That one degree is usually momentum.”

Extraordinary people have that momentum. While ordinary people give up in desperation when water is heated to 211 degrees, extraordinary people invest more efforts beyond 211 degrees with persistence and achieve ultimate victory. 

Here are some popular tips to cultivate persistence:

• Keep an eye on the long-term goal. Think about them. A constructive dream is capable of saving you from the frustrations of the present. 
• Be focused and clear about “what you are here for”. Find out what makes you wake up from your bed in the morning. Be clear in your mind about what you want to achieve and become. Craft your vision accordingly. Be flexible and adaptable. Learn when to hold and when to fold. The first job of the teacher is to develop the learning attitude in her students. Once that happens, the rest follows. 
• Work hard, smart and wise with discipline and dedication. Be consistent in your efforts. Strive hard relentlessly and take clues from the environment around. Move with the times. When the world has moved on with computers, a teacher cannot stick to just a pen and pencil anymore. She has to include in the pedagogy, the learning that is at par with others so her students are competitive.
• Cultivate the habit of writing because it not only helps you improve your writing skills but also enhances your persistence. Every teacher has a lesson plan and a child-development schedule where she plans and records the progress. When you feel that things are not working, a look at the plan will tell you that you did progress but you have to make more efforts to reach where you want to. That ushers hope and faith in the future.
• Try to predict the problems that you might face, based on problems that you have already faced. 

Me and persistence 

Perhaps like each one of us, I have encountered my share of hard times. Whenever I wanted to achieve something, there were obstacles. Success was never a cakewalk. In the year 2006, I purchased three plots with my hard-earned money in the outskirts of Hyderabad, India. It was a small amount. I invested in three plots in three different locations to sell them after a few years at a profit. A friend’s brother helped me purchase the plots. Unfortunately, all three plots were under litigation. In 2016, when I wanted to sell these plots to fund my younger son’s overseas education, I came to know that there was no land available physically for one of the plots.

I had been cheated. Even the other two plots had been sold to me under questionable conditions and finally, none of the plots were mine. Efforts to confront the culprit and get things sorted proved futile.  I had to struggle for 9 months to raise funds for my son’s overseas education. 

I hail from a lower middle-class family. I am rich in knowledge but poor in pocket. I had to struggle hard to sell these disputed properties. In India, courts usually take a lot of time to resolve disputes. I tried to negotiate with various people. I persisted for almost a year. Finally, I sold two plots at a loss and came out of the litigation. For the third plot, for which there is no land, I have tried hard to trace a seller. He is not available at the address mentioned in the documents. The issue remains unresolved even today. These hard times taught me not to trust anyone blindly. 

However, I strongly believe that such hard times have given me the chance to practice perseverance and emerge stronger and wiser.  Tough times don’t last but tough individuals do. They navigate through impossible times, holding a flashlight at the end of the tunnel.

Over to you!

Most leaders have failed many times but they have persisted to reach their tipping points. When you look at their biographies, it is obvious that they have an equally interesting flashbacks of failures and frustrations. Colin Powell observed, “Success is the result of perfection, hard work, learning from failure, loyalty, and persistence.” Never give up just because you have failed a few times. It is often the last key in the bunch that will open the door to your success. Remember, persistence is the sibling of excellence. Write your own success story with persistence.

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Have you ever wondered where your resiliency comes from? Do you get a certain amount of it when you’re born, and when you run out, it’s game over? Or, is resiliency something that you can build and nurture?

You probably know people who get knocked down and get back up again and again with seemingly no effort. You might wonder: how do they do it? But then, maybe you cross paths with them later in life, and they don’t have any more “get up and go” left. What’s happened? Have they run out of resiliency? Can they get it back?

I recently spoke with Andrea Marcellus, life coach, fitness expert, and author of self-help book, “The Way In” to explore these questions and discover new ways to keep building that all-important resiliency muscle.

What is resilience?

We all face rejections, betrayals, or disappointments from a young age—whether in our family of origin, in our schools, or in our communities. And we all need ways to help us get back up again. This ability to rebound is resilience.

Resilience gives us buoyancy and elasticity to address stress, pain, or loss in our lives without snapping. Think of a rubber band, and how it snaps back into shape after it’s stretched. This stretchability is a quality of resilience. Except, what doesn’t work about the rubber band metaphor is that resilience does more than help us return to our original shape; Andrea defines resilience as “the capacity to expand.” Perhaps a better metaphor, then, is bread dough, that is stretched and kneaded by our experiences.

Mentorship through adversity

We all have a natural survival instinct, but our level of resiliency has more to do with how we’re raised and the amount of adversity we’ve had to face. In other words, our upbringing and our life experiences are an important key to how much resiliency we have than our DNA.

The key question, Andrea says, is did you learn to help yourself through positive mentorship following adversity?

In this case, one or more of these statements is probably true:

• You were given space and time to feel your emotions and express your disappointments.
• You were taught how to address and move through the emotions of the disappointment
• You learned to see life in a larger perspective, with all its peaks and valleys.
• You learned to reframe failures without resorting to defensive stances such as “They didn’t deserve me anyway” or downplaying them by saying, “I didn’t really care that much.” 

If the answer is no, then perhaps one or more of these things is true:

• You were raised to “suck it up” or “push through”, getting into a habit of getting by on willpower.
• You heard that life is a battlefield filled with winners and losers, so you became adversarial, and all the language around your efforts was about “the fight.”
• You heard that the person who strikes first wins, so you learn to address problems with knee-jerk, reflexive words or actions.
• You grew up to believe that suffering in silence is a virtue, while talking about your struggles is complaining or whining. 

No matter our upbringings, however, we can all strengthen our resilience muscle. Below are three ingredients Andrea recommends for creating an environment in which resilience can grow.

“Our greatest weakness lies in giving up. The most certain way to succeed is always to try just one more time.” ― Thomas Edison

Strong purpose

What is your “why” in life? It is your birthright to live a life that excites and motivates you. But it’s easy to get stuck in malaise, get sidetracked by egoic ambitions, or lose the plot on what you really love and care about.

According to Andrea, you need to find “focus and purpose and a constant journey that’s above and beyond your occupation. Because when your mind is activated by purpose, it is forward-thinking and full of positive possibilities. It’s creative, it’s curious, and it’s non-judgmental.”

So, having a strong purpose in life is directly correlated to our ability to be resilient. Maybe we should update the phrase, “When you love what you do, you won’t work a day in your life” to “When you love what you do, you build resilience for life.”

Train your brain

Despite what you may think about our brains deteriorating as we get older, recent studies show that the opposite is true. Andrea says that our positive brain centers: the hippocampus, the cerebellum, and the prefrontal cortex—can be trained, just as the body can, so that you have the ability to pull yourself out of any downward spiral.

Tara Swart, Neuroscientist, MD, Executive Advisor, Author of “The Source,” offers up these ideas to help support our brains in their ability to be more resilient:

“Start with the physical foundations: Rest your brain with 7-9 hours sleep per night. Hydrate your neurons with half a liter of water for every 30lb of body weight. Oxygenate your brain by walking 5000-10,000 steps per day and doing 150 minutes of aerobic exercise per week. Meditate for 20 minutes a day. Take the supplements that suit your needs. Eat as much oily fish, eggs, nuts and seeds, green leafy vegetables, avocado, olives, and coconut oil as you can. Drink four cups of green tea per week.”

Community

Life is too hard to go it alone. We need others who we can trust to share our journeys with, and who can help us process, reframe, learn, and grow from each experience. 

A few tips:

Make sure that you’re surrounded by people who won’t try to minimize or always expect you to see “the bright side,” and who support you in the ways you need to be supported.

• Create a circle of allyship in which no one feels pressured to put a happy face following a disappointment or hardship but are instead held in support while they process and regain their footing.
• Consider modeling yourself after someone who is resilient. Pay attention to how they navigate their lives and disappointments. Note that they are not driven by pride, arrogance, boastfulness, or bluster. Instead, they carry an unbreakable sense of personal authority and inner resourcefulness.

Creating a supportive community can become pseudo-resilience for when you need to take a moment before you can tap into your own, or, as is often said, the “strength of others give us strength.”

Conclusion

No one escapes this life without experiencing setbacks and hardships. It’s healthy to feel your feelings and communicate these with others in the aftermath of a loss or failure. We all need to occasionally take a time-out to get our balance and find that focus again. Having a strong purpose, training your brain, and building a community of supportive people are three of the things you can do to make sure that you rebound in a healthy way.

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Infertility is a stressful, confusing issue that millions of couples face. But, even though 1 in 7 couples struggle with infertility, it’s still considered taboo to talk about openly. This only leads to a further sense of embarrassment and stress, which mystifies the problem, and does little to help.

If you happen to be dealing with fertility issues, then it’s quite likely that you are also suffering from a good deal of stress, and that this stress is interfering with other elements of your day-to-day life. But this needn’t be the case.

Here are a few tips to help you cultivate mindfulness and healthy habits while you are dealing with infertility stress.

Understanding Infertility

Part of the problem with infertility is that it isn’t well understood by most people. This leads to embarrassing and insensitive jokes and can make it difficult to open up or see a medical professional who can help you increase your chances of conception.

First things first, you should know that infertility is defined by the NHS as “when a couple cannot get pregnant (conceive) despite having regular unprotected sex.” Regular sex is around 3 times a week for at least a year. So, if it’s only been a month or two, then you shouldn’t be too worried about infertility.

Infertility is frustrating for both parties, and you should not try to deal with it alone. Instead, speak to a medical professional who can help you make key lifestyle changes, or can suggest treatments and conception plans like IVF and other options.

Finally, do your best to avoid common fertility myths. Fertility is not a woman’s problem alone, and vaccination status does not impact your ability to conceive. Your best approach is to work closely with medical professionals who can help you with trusted, evidence-based treatments that have worked for thousands of couples.

Alcohol

Many people turn to alcohol when they’re under stress. However, alcohol slows down your cognitive function and deepens the stress you are feeling. Additionally, excessive consumption of alcohol can repress your desire to have sex, as your body’s reaction to sexual stimulation is dampened when you are under the influence of alcohol. There is also a chance that heavy alcohol consumption can disrupt your hormonal balance, which makes it harder to conceive.

In the long run, using alcohol to cope will make you feel worse and can add to the stress you are already feeling. This will not help you overcome infertility stress and can cause serious friction in relationships. It can also lead to alcoholism.

It is possible to overcome alcohol dependence, and you should start by speaking to your doctor or GP. Additionally, you can get in touch with alcohol support services who are there to help guide you through the recovery process and will understand what you are going through.

Smoking And Vaping

By now, everyone knows that smoking is terrible for your health and the health of those around you. Over time, smoking reduces fertility and can significantly increase the chance of respiratory illness in newborn babies. Yet, millions of people light up every day.

Cigarettes also cause severe anxiety and dependency in smokers. So, while nicotine might give you an initial sense of relief, it actually increases your overall stress and makes it almost impossible to find a sense of peace and mindfulness in your day-to-day life.

Many smokers have turned to vaping as an alternative to smoking. While vaping is less harmful than smoking, it still is not safe and may cause a host of health issues following long-term use. This is a problem, as 60% of all vapers are millennials — the same age group that is most likely to be having sex for conception. While this may not have a direct effect on your fertility, vaping is still addictive and can cause you to feel stressed and depressed when you do not have access to it.

Diet

The food we eat plays a major role in our overall happiness, health, and wellbeing. That’s because different foods impact everything from our weight to our mood. If you know that you struggle with stress, then you can consider a change of diet as part of your action plan to live a more mindful lifestyle.

First off, you need to ensure you’re eating regularly. When you’re hungry, it becomes hard to focus, and you’ll quickly become irritable. You also need to ensure you’re taking on plenty of water, as dehydration has a detrimental impact on your mood and energy levels.

It’s also worth experimenting a little with different food groups if you feel as though you are bloated often, or are having a hard time digesting your food. That’s because our guts are all different, and may have a harder time digesting certain foods. By finding a varied range of foods that make you feel great, you optimize your chances of living a life guided by mindfulness and positive thinking.

Mindfulness

Mindfulness is a practice in its own right. Nowadays, almost anyone can carve out the time to follow mindfulness routines and combat any kind of stress they might be feeling. You can easily find online, guided mindfulness routines to follow like Mindful.org or Calm.

These services are particularly useful for folks who are dealing with infertility stress. The sessions are guided by calming speakers, and the routine will keep you on track and help reduce the stress you feel. Over time, this will help you manage infertility stress, and lead to a healthier, more optimistic life.

Infertility is a common problem that affects millions of people around the globe. You should work closely with a medical professional who can get you the treatment you need and can pick up healthy habits along the way that help improve your chances of conception and reduce your overall stress.

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As we raise children, we often teach them that grit, perseverance, and resilience lead to mastery and success. They do. But what are we teaching them about their intelligence and capacity to learn?  When children believe that they have been born with predetermined skills and abilities or with a fixed intelligence that they cannot change, they are more likely to avoid challenging subjects and create artificial limits on themselves that will impact them into adulthood.

In her book Mindset: The New Psychology of Success psychologist & researcher Dr. Carol S. Dweck suggested two general mindsets: fixed and growth. Someone with a fixed mindset believes that character, intelligence, and creative ability are unmoving givens that can’t be changed in any meaningful way. Looking perfect and avoiding failure at all costs becomes a way of maintaining that inner sense of competence. When challenged or frustrated by a task, you may hear people say things like, “I’m so stupid because I don’t know how,” or “I’m lousy at this, and I can’t get any better.” They don’t know how to do something and don’t want to make an effort because they believe they should only do what they already know how to do or what feels easy. This risk-averse mindset can lead to an unwillingness to push yourself to do challenging things. 

By contrast, Dweck suggests that a person with a growth mindset thrives on challenge, seeing it as a launchpad for growth and for extending existing abilities instead of evidence of unintelligence. With a growth mindset, you focus on continuous improvement and self-awareness through ongoing feedback. You recognize that you can improve through your specific efforts and deliberate practice. You can see yourself changing and growing through application and experience. Having a growth mindset means that for you, challenges are an opportunity for growth. You understand that your brain can learn new, complex tasks (at any age) and develop with training and effort. You may start thinking things like, “I can do hard things,” “It’s ok to make a mistake; that’s how I learn,” “With practice, I can and will get better.”

“In a growth mindset, challenges are exciting rather than threatening. So rather than thinking, oh, I’m going to reveal my weaknesses, you say, wow, here’s a chance to grow.” – Carol S. Dweck

So why is it vital to know about and develop a growth mindset?

The truth is that having a growth mindset and doing the hard things will absolutely help you accomplish more than you could even imagine. However, if you were born and raised in the 20th century, you were most likely not raised with a growth mindset. Before 2006, when Dweck’s Mindset book was published, children were more likely to be raised to believe that talent, intelligence, and ability are given at birth and governed by genetics. There are probably several skills and abilities that many may have given up on developing or not focused their efforts on because they believe that they lack the capacity to do them well. When they allow their default programming and conditioning to dictate how much effort is put into learning new skills without challenging norms, they will be subconsciously holding themselves back and miss out on exploring the outer limits of their talents.

I know that for me, there have been many times in my life that I just decided, “I am not good at that,” and just avoided the challenge. I, like many others of my generation, grew up having a fixed mindset. For example, I was convinced that I was no good at math. As a result, I did not like it and made little effort because it seemed too hard. My fear and loathing of all things math-related meant that I did not get my bachelor’s degree in psychology or business, subjects I really liked, because both had an advanced math requirement, and I was certain I wouldn’t be able to do it. 

The ironic thing, however, is that ultimately, I had no choice but to overcome my conviction that I was lousy at math if I wanted to pursue any degree in psychology. I was required to take a statistics class at the undergraduate level to get into a program and then a graduate-level research and statistics course. What I learned by completing both courses with an “A” was that by being willing to ask a million questions and putting maximum effort into understanding what seemed challenging, I could do things I had previously believed were not possible for me.  At the time, I did not know that I was applying the principles of having a growth mindset.

If you have a fixed mindset, here are five habits to help you cultivate a growth mindset. For the next 90 days, focus intentionally on integrating them into your daily life; being intentional means writing them down, thinking about them, and asking yourself, honestly, if you are using them.

1. Be Curious and creative. Challenge yourself to learn something new every day and go beyond your comfort zone. You will discover new strategies to implement that will help you achieve goals you previously thought were impossible or too difficult. Keep tweaking them for effectiveness. 
2. Be Committed to the growth, goals, & promises you make to yourself. If you want to see progress, it is essential to toss out the excuses and stay the course. Decide what you are going to do and that there is no room for excuses. Commit to your decision and then do what you have committed to for the time you have committed to doing it. Hold yourself accountable for your commitments. 
3. Be Consistent with your efforts. Consistency is the key to developing new habits and learning new things. It is also usually one of our biggest hurdles and where good intentions fall apart. Be focused with your efforts. Decide what, when, and how you will channel 
4. Be Courageous in the face of challenges. Setbacks and challenges are learning opportunities. They are your most significant opportunity for growth. Embrace them. Seek solutions and make adjustments. No matter how exhaustive your plan or fine-tuned the details, obstacles will surface unexpectedly and, unless you have a crystal ball, you won’t always be able to predict exactly what obstacles will occur. So, don’t waste energy on that. Instead, face obstacles when they show up with the lens of curiosity and be focused on solutions. Be agile in both your mindset and approach. 
5. Embrace Constructive feedback & leverage it for growth & expansion. Sometimes your best prospects for personal and professional development come from utilizing corrective feedback to grow. Ask mentors and supervisors for specific feedback to give you clarity on the skills needed to move forward and the blind spots, obstacles, and pitfalls you may not be able to see by yourself.

By deliberately and intentionally focusing on these five habits daily, your life and work will shift positively in ways you can’t imagine. You will have more confidence because confidence is built through working on your skills and seeing growth and improvement over time. Making an effort is the only way forward, so be willing to do the work. Each new day is an opportunity to try again, so try again.

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