Persistence is a very important trait in life. For starters, any hobbies anyone may have at one time required a lot of persistence in order for you to enjoy it. For example, I personally enjoy art but initially I was absolutely terrible at it. However with a lot of persistence over the years I managed to draw at what I believe a good level. While I don’t have this hobby anymore, I needed that persistence to succeed at into other things such as, school, sports,  and exercise. Most things in life require persistence. I didn’t think I needed to force myself to do anything that is, until I found myself going back to school, after taking a very long break. Looking back now, I see a few key things that make persistence what it is. Motivation, positivity, and even failure are what I believe are key parts to persistence.

Motivation is essential to persistence. What is your drive, your goal? As tristanridesflat stated in his blog, “I came home one sunny evening to my father putting training wheels on what was my brand new Huffy. I was ecstatic to see this, as my older brother had been able to ride a mountain bike for years“. His motivation was to keep learning that next step with biking, even going all the way to BMX. What motivation is, as stated from stateuniversity states that, “Motivation is also the study of what pushes or pulls an individual to start, direct, sustain, and finally end an activity”. A personal motivation I’ve had lately, is forcing myself going to the gym, two to three times a week. My motivation is to be healthy and gain a bit of upper body mass. I have been forcing myself to run at least 1 mile, everyday minimum, along with other exercises, such as, squats, push ups and various other ones, depending on what I’ve accomplished that week.

I believe positivity is also another factor in determining persistence. How could anyone be persistent about something while kicking your feet along the way? Persistence is about having an optimistic attitude for whatever you goal may be. Positivity can also link to another part of persistence, which is motivation as I mentioned earlier. If you cannot be motivated and maintain a positive attitude in your goals, you are doomed for failure before you even begin. As Dominic Randolph mentioned in his article about teaching good character in students. “When that person suddenly has to face up to a difficult moment, then I think they’re screwed, to be honest. I don’t think they’ve grown the capacities to be able to handle that”. This could mean that without a positive outlook on things, a student could be overcome with doubt and stop their drive to be persistent about his or her career.

Another key to persistence is failure, without failure you cannot learn from your mistakes. You can only learn so much from a textbook, since part of failure is doing things with hands on experience. Such as, learning how to repair a car, you can read as much as you want, but you probably won’t be able to fix a car immediately after reading how to because you don’t have the experience. You need to go out in life and experience everything you can. As stated in tribou17’s blog post, “When I first stepped into class in college, I felt prepared and excited, ready to finally begin focusing my education towards what I wanted to do with my life. However, I nearly immediately began to struggle, sidled with difficulties in multiple courses coupled with stricter time constraints”. For example, you could be going after a job you really want and have to the essential credentials and then some on your resume. However if you can’t just “Wow” that employer you’re not going to get that job you want so badly. This is a lesson in life failure, which in turn you can force you to take a look of what happened, figure out how you could improve what you did and said during the interview and improve your chances for next time. As Jennie Rose mentioned on her blog wall, a book called How Children Succeed: Grit, Curiosity, and the Hidden Power of Character, by author Paul Tough stated “Critics have argued that what Tough is really talking about are life skills that can’t be taught.”. These examples show that failure has an affect on persistence.

In conclusion, I believe that their is quite a few things that make persistence what is it. Again, motivation, positivity, and failure are just a few of many things that can make persistence, such a important aspect to anyone’s life. Persistence is definitely a learned trait however, because sometimes you just need to pick yourself up, from whatever is holding you back and push yourself forward to your goal. Persistence is a life skill that cannot be taught through traditional means.

Works Cited

Rose, Jennie. “Can Kids Be Taught Persistence.” Kqed.com. Kqed, Inc. 27 July  2012. Web. 2 April 2014.

Tough, Paul. “What If The Secret To Success Is Failure?” NYTimes.com . 14 September 2011. Web. 2 April 2014.

Tribou17. “Persistence Learning how to walk again” 2014. 22 February 2014. Web. 2 April 2014.

Tristanridesflat. “Memoir Final 2014”. 17 February 2014. Web. 2 April 2014.