This week’s virtue is Persistence.

Its definition is:

  1. The act of persisting.
  2. The state or quality of being persistent; persistency.
  3. Continuance of an effect after the cause is removed.

Again, being intentional is key.  Taking notice when you are being persistent and observing when others are being persistent.

My thoughts on this is that persistence can be considered as habitual/forming habits/consistency and perseverance.  The following are examples, primarily from this week’s happenings-

  1. Habitual, forming habits, consistency: since taking part of the MKE Mastermind group, I/we have developed good and positive habits. I/we are persistent in doing our readings; reciting of our DMPs, BPB, 7 Laws of the Mind, The Guy/Gal in the Mirror, etc.; shapes and looking for the shapes and colors throughout our day, adding to and flashing through our gratefulness and accomplishments index cards, sitting and meditating, exercises, being intentional, and being an observer.  At work, I find the same thing.  I am persistent in my work habits- bringing the product forward, facing it, price tags to the left.  It makes for a great presentation.  Being persistent and consistent.
  2. Perseverance- consistent in applying a course of action to achieve a goal (closely related, but differing from above). A few weeks ago, I officiated at a collegiate dance competition.  The software program that they were using, I haven’t used in a decade, so I wanted to practice a bit beforehand.  Come to find out, the program has a new owner, and many changes and updates were made over the last few years.  I asked for instructions to update the system on my laptop and I was sent a long document of technological gobbledygook.  I did the best that I could, as I am far from understanding programming and computers.  I didn’t get to practice, however, I was able to get in to look around and make a few changes.  The morning of the competition, I wasn’t able to download the competition into my system/laptop, even with over the phone instructions, so I ended up manually tabulated all of the scores, as I did 20 yeas ago.  Once I got home, I contacted the new owner of the program, who I used to work with at the Perdue University competition.  It took us several hours and multiple zoom calls (screen sharing and giving him control), text messages, and emails to where I was finally able to download the program and competition into my laptop.  I was persistent and persevered to reaching out to him for his time availability and asking questions in between our calls, because I needed to enter in the scores (of which I am currently doing) and for future work with the amateur and collegiate groups.

I’m ending this post with a consistency- what do you do that you are persistent and consistent?  What habits are you persistent?  What circumstance have you been in to persevere through difficulties to reach the end goal?

See you next week where I entertain you with my next virtue…