Determination! A key ingredient for success

I spent the last two weeks reading up on lives of successful people and the one they all had in common was their ability to press forward, to persevere no matter how many times they failed. Their ability to pick themselves up after every fall, get up and keep moving forward. The funny thing is unless you begin to read up on these guys, you never really learn about their constant struggles and failures, all we see are their constant successes and we think they must be more intelligent than us or they had it better in life or they never really failed at anything but the truth is they probably have more failures than you and I because they have tried at it more times than you and I have had the courage to try.

We all think Microsoft and Bill gates springs to mind and we say a man who has been successful in changing the face of computers but this was a man who dropped out of college to pursue a dream and who had every door closed in his face in the beginning when he was looking for funding and for someone to believe in his dream. I can imagine Bill Gates walking into a bank or into anyone's house to ask for funding, they would all be falling over to give him the money but alas fast forward now, Microsoft is one of the few companies with a very healthy cash flow on their balance sheets.

I was talking to a group of young people about the ingredients of success and I asked them who a successful person was and they mentioned Messi and Serena Williams.

Serena Williams as a Tennis player has a very successful career winning 18 grand slams and many other trophies. I've followed her career for a very long time, she had days where she was knocked out of tournaments in the very initial rounds. What did she do after every defeat, she learnt the lesson and came back out the next time fighting to win, that shows determination. Did she fail at that point, yes, did she pick herself up and keep pressing forward? Yes also.

I like to compare determination to two natural things in life. When you physically fall down , even though you get hurt, cut or bruise yourself, I am very sure you don't just stay there and never get up. No, you stand up and get treatment for your wound or you get someone to help you if you are unable to help yourself, somehow no matter what it takes, you get up after a fall because you need to get well. That is determination. The second thing I like to compare it to is a child learning to walk. I always watch them in awe because no matter how many times they fall, they cry sometimes but they get up and keep at it because they are determined to get to their destination, they are determined to learn how to walk.

Why am I saying all these, it pains me to see people who have the ability to succeed at something they have a passion for and quit at the first sign of an obstacle or decide of give up after a fall or even so many falls. The truth is for you to succeed you have to be determined to get u and continue on after every fall or failure. It is not okay to quit when things do not go your way or when it gets very rough, that is when you should pick yourself up even if it means getting help and press forward.

My primary school motto was perseverance and success- it made more sense to me as I got older. For every great success story, there  are a series of failure stories behind it. No wonder the bible says a righteous man may fall seven time but...... When it comes to determination, my greatest hero is God, who after Man fell in the garden of Eden, He kept coming up with different ways to redeem man and was determined to save us His beloved creation and did not give up until He sacrificed His son, Jesus at the cross. Imagine if God had given up....food for thought. Jesus is another very powerful example who when faced with the cross even though at one point He prayed to God to let this cup pass over Him, still went to the cross because He was determined to save us, to fulfil His purpose. Imagine a world where His blood was not shed.

I leave you with this, find a successful person who you admire, search for information, their stories, their biographies and begin to read up and get behind the story of the person, I believe in there you will learn a bit about determination to succeed.

The LGP Team