Forge a Tougher Mind by Practicing Persistence

Your hardest times often lead to the greatest moments of your life. Keep going. Tough situations build strong people in the end — Roy T. Bennett

The Obstacle is The Way by Ryan Holiday is one of the great mini guides of putting into practice aspects of Stoicism. While it is similar to many self-help books, it is a fairly concise and informative book that is chock-full of different strategies and ideas that can be adapted to help us go through the hardships that life presents us. One of the most important ideas mentioned is practicing persistence.

What is persistence?

Persistence is a fundamental building block to sustaining change over time and effectively working towards accomplishing our goals/visions.

Persistence is the set of actions that move our goals forward, in an upward trajectory.

Persistence is the space between defining goals and achieving them.

And ultimately, practicing persistence is an important essence to intrinsic growth. Desirable skills also develop when practicing persistence such as flexibility, accountability, acceptance, patience and others. Persistence and all of these skills compound when deliberately practiced over time. They combine together to strengthen your will and toughen your mind.

So how do we put persistence into practice?

1. Shift Your Perspective

Whether you have problems with perfectionism, impatience, overthinking, fear, or anxiety, these problems hold you back from consistent action towards your goals. The way to overcome them is to formulate new perspectives and ways of thinking that will chisel the shackles away. Formulating new positive perspectives is a form of practicing persistence. This is because it shows that you refuse to be bogged down by previous ways of being/thinking.

Here are some perspectives that practice persistence:

• Accepting your circumstances. “Welcome to Wherever You Are” is a song by Bon Jovi I use to remind myself how far I’ve come and to live in the present moment. Circumstances can be tough. However, triumphing in the midst of them leads to mental toughness and growth. Meditating and journaling help acknowledge certain circumstances and negative thought patterns by bringing them out in the open. Bringing them out in the open defines what needs to be accepted in the first place.
• Having an abundance mindset allows you to open your mind to other possibilities and routes. Stephen Covey coined this term in the book 7 Habits of Highly Effective People. It means taking a step back once in awhile and trying to see other methods to achieve your goals. It’s also understanding that there is more out there than you think.
• Embracing any failure or setbacks. You will fail. And you will fail a lot. Understand that the feelings that come with failure are just part of the journey and should be welcomed. And that they are just as important, if not more, as your successes. It means you are actually trying something, which is amazing.
• Focus on yourself and yourself only. Don’t let other people take the spotlight in your thoughts and plans. And if they do, take a deep breath and move on to the next action in front of you.
• Put pressure off yourself by being kind and truthful to yourself. Being harsh on yourself will only make you feel inadequate and bog you down. Treat yourself like a best friend.

While the above ideas can be abstract and not as concrete as action, they are still ways of practicing persistence. Because persistence is within the realm of the mind. A persistent mind will lead to toughness in will and discipline. However, a shifting of perspectives won’t happen over night. Like training your muscles, it can take months and most likely years of continual practice. There are many ideas like the above ones you can remind yourself. By deliberately reminding yourself of these new positive perspectives, your soul’s strength will compound.

One step at a time though. As the next point will mention, you cannot take on more than what you can handle.

Note that this step can be especially difficult if suffering from chronic illnesses or mental illness. Counselors and therapists are an amazing option to figure out what those initial problems you have, and then coming up with steps to work on them. I highly recommend going through this route for anyone able to get these resources.

2. Take Action (No matter how small)

This is where practice in persistence becomes more concrete. Knowing what actions to take and not take are fundamental aspects of practicing persistence.

When it comes to putting in the work, you cannot have an all or nothing way of thinking when pursuing your goals. We often envision a certain ideal, that only exists within our minds, of how we should achieve something.

This won’t get you anywhere. People often freeze when looking at the monumental task in front of them instead of actually trying to tackle it.

No matter how big or small an objective is, you have to break it down into smaller tasks. Break it down into tasks that you can work on daily or weekly. Irregardless of any timeline, there should be some form of progress.

Starting small may seem a bit discouraging, but it’s better than doing nothing. Tackling small tasks and finishing them will have a snowball effect over time. You’ll get quicker at finishing tasks and moving on to bigger ones.

Some examples from some spheres I’m familiar with:

• If I’m attempting to solve a leetcode problem, I try a brute force approach if I don’t know exactly what an optimal solution can be.
• Reading the first page of a book. And doing that for each chapter. Over time it’ll be finished.
• Starting on a smaller dumbbell weight as to strength and not hurt myself.

If you face any boredom or a sense of ease from a current set of actions, thats an indication that you can do more. The opposite is also true. Any head banging, or procrastination means you need to break the task down more. Following this basis will increase your threshold of what you can do daily. That’s the type of progress you want. That is a flexible practice of persistence that will lead to achievement and a sharper mind.

3. Reflect and Evaluate to Make Adjustments

Through whatever workflow or plan you are running with, there are going to be mistakes and failures. While setbacks disappoint and hurt, they’re an important indicator of a potential adjustment that need to be made. Adjusting to new circumstances and having that flexibility to try a new solution/route is the basis of smart persistence.

Persistence is not just nonstop grinding until something happens. It’s knowing how to keep going and where to make adjustments when you run into roadblocks or stagnate. Bouncing back from setbacks and attempting to avoid those mistake in the future is essential to the overall plan.

Through trying the wrong ways you can discover new and better ways to tackling your goals and problems. Any failure is positive just as long you learn from them and adjust.

To reflect and make adjustments here are some things you may try out:

• Take a break and go for a walk. There’s no use going in circles.
• Take a step back from the granular and look at the bigger picture/goal. This also involves stepping away, but this time perhaps looking back at what has been done and see if it aligns with the vision you’re going for. Does anything need to change?
• Jot down ideas or activities you’d like to see or do better. It could even be things you want to cut out more. I recommend having an end-of-week journal session with yourself. If that doesn’t fit into your schedule then a monthly or bi-monthly journal sessions works too. You fit in yearly evaluations if going for longer term goals.
• Read and research. Problem solving can be tough, especially for larger projects and goals. Always be on the look out for new ideas that may help with what you’re striving for.

Persistence is looking at obstacles and goals from different angles. Practicing this will not only help you solve problems faster, but it will help you develop a flexible mind. An elastic mind is one that can get over setbacks easier and reach achievements more efficiently.

4. Understand That There is No Rush

It’s a marathon with yourself, and yourself only. Often we want to speed things up and instantly see results. Sometimes we get even more anxious when we see others do what we want to do as well.

The fact of the matter is, we can only control what we think or do. Remind yourself that in order to see change or reach a goal, our plans have to be sustained over time. Some goals will not be achieved a day, a week, a month, or a year from now.

And that’s ok. There’s no rush. Focus on what’s in front of you day by day.

This is why practicing persistence is so important. It emphasizes learning to be flexible and take action in the face of every day adversity. In the process we learn to be patient with ourselves and not in a hurry to get results.

Why?

Because we realize that things can’t be done overnight. Things don’t just turn around right-away. We stick to a program and make adjustments over time. Time then becomes a mutual friend rather than an enemy.

5. Conclusions

There are many ways to practice persistence and I just outlined a few ways that you can. Practicing persistence will help with achieving your goals more efficiently and make your mind tougher as well. I highly recommend reading The Obstacle is The Way for a better run-through of all the ideas I mentioned and more.

For those who read this far thank you. The ideas in this article have already been said 1000-fold, but it is my first one I’m publishing. Understand also, that these ideas and articles are things I would like to incorporate in my life more. It’ll serve as a reminder for myself and hopefully others too.

Sources:

Unsplash: https://unsplash.com/photos/GYr9A2CPMhY

The Obstacle is The Way by Ryan Holiday

Bon Jovi?

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Previously Published on medium

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