Signs of Lack of Persistence, and How to Fix It

This article is an excerpt from the Shortform book guide to "Think and Grow Rich" by Napoleon Hill. Shortform has the world's best summaries and analyses of books you should be reading.

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How can you recognize a lack of persistence? How do you build persistence?

When you can’t summon the willpower to overcome obstacles and to keep pushing towards your goals, you need to improve your persistence. Lack of persistence can be fixed through the strengthening of your desire to succeed.

Read on to discover how to identify and fix the symptoms of lack of persistence.

What Are the Symptoms of Lack of Persistence?

You can’t transform thoughts and desires into money without persistence. You’ll inevitably run into obstacles in the pursuit of your goal, and you need the willpower to keep pushing through those obstacles.

While most people give up at the first sign of difficulty, successful people persist with unstoppable willpower and desire. Those who carry on with single-minded determination despite opposition may be seen as cold-blooded or ruthless, but what they are doing is simply exerting the will to achieve their desire. If you suffer from a lack of persistence, you won’t succeed at anything significant.

Example: When Howard Schultz first opened Starbucks, it lost money for three straight years, including more than $1 million in 1989 alone. But Schultz never gave up. He believed strongly that his plans for building a chain of coffee shops were solid, and the company would soon be profitable. Eventually his Seattle stores did become profitable and he expanded the business to other cities and then other countries, making Schultz one of the world’s richest people.

The challenge of following the principles outlined in this book for achieving riches is itself a test of your persistence. The process of learning to be persistent can be slow at first, like that of surfacing from a deep dream in which you can’t move — you start to awaken slowly, willing yourself to regain control of one set of muscles at a time, until you finally “snap’ awake. If you don’t have ideal persistence today, you can build persistence gradually, until one day you suddenly awaken and get it.

Four requirements for developing persistence are:

A specific goal or purpose, and an all-consuming desire to achieve it.
A specific plan that you pursue non-stop.
A mind that blocks out negativity and discouragement.
A Master Mind group whose members encourage you.

Your payoff for following these four steps is the ability to write your own ticket in life.

You should also examine yourself methodically for signs of lack of persistence:

Motivation
- You’re indifferent: You’re willing to compromise on your goal rather than fight for it.
- Your desire is weak because you lack a motive that drives you to act.
- You lack ambition to be wealthy, to act so that you become wealthy, and to own wealth.
- You’re self-satisfied: You can’t better yourself or your circumstances if you remain complacent or smug about where you are.
Specificity of Goal
- You can’t define what you want, and so have nothing to work toward.
- You don’t have any plans that are thought-out and written so they can be evaluated.
Work Habits
- You procrastinate, using excuses and alibis to justify not making plans or acting.
- You have no interest in obtaining specialized knowledge necessary to succeed.
- You don’t act on ideas or recognize when opportunity presents itself.
- You search for shortcuts to riches instead of ‘paying your dues.’
Mindset
- You’re indecisive, passing the buck to avoid making decisions.
- You blame others for your mistakes and accept mistakes as unavoidable, which means you don’t learn from them.
- You’re eager to quit at the first sign of defeat.
- You’re always wishing for things instead of applying willpower to make them happen.
- You worry about what others think, and so fail to act for fear of social rejection.

Reflect on each of these signs to see if they apply to you. If so, create a plan to solve your weakness. If you succeed, you will fix your lack of persistence.

To build persistence:

Use affirmation and visualization (autosuggestion) to keep a clear picture of what you desire foremost in your mind, which will attract it to you.
Renew and strengthen your desire for riches. Weak desire leads to weak results.
Seek help to overcome your lack of persistence from your MasterMind group.
Ensure that you have the complete recipe: a definite purpose, desire, faith, a specific plan, accurate knowledge, cooperation of a MasterMind group, and willpower. and ability to make persistence a habit.

Signs of Lack of Persistence, and How to Fix It