Perseverance

Everyone has heard that they must persevere from their teachers about academic success, their family about school or life, or their friends about competitions. But what does it mean to persevere? It is usually defined as persistence in doing something despite difficulty or delay in achieving success. In simpler terms, it means that we must pick ourselves up despite setbacks in anything that we strive to be good at. It may feel like you have lost everything at that moment, but it doesn’t mean we have to give up, it just means that we must work harder to achieve it. Nothing can ever truly drag us down it IF we don’t let it,

It is important to have perseverance as it is a good character strength. It will take you far in life. It shows in how you go about your life, and it is a trait that many people admire. It will easily get anyone a good job and a happy life more than grades or money ever will. Some examples of people who went on to do great things due to their perseverance are J.K. Rowling, Henry Ford, Thomas Edison, and Walt Disney. It may be hard to believe that such successful and influential people had to have the perseverance to get that far, but it is the truth. J.K. Rowling for example got her manuscript for the first Harry Potter book rejected many many times. As a struggling single mother, it was hard, but she never gave up, and now she is a world-famous author and one of the richest women in the world. Henry Ford is known as the inventor of the assembly line, and it is he who revolutionized industrial production. He has gone bankrupt numerous times before he turned the Ford Motor Company into a success. If he didn’t persevere, he couldn’t have gotten to the point where he is now. Another true paragon of perseverance was Thomas Edison. He is famous for his invention, the electric lightbulb. Currently, who hasn’t heard of the lightbulb. Every household has at least one of them and we don’t think twice while using them. But this revolutionary object wasn’t done in a day. It was months and months of failure, and hundreds, perhaps thousands of times before his breakthrough moment. But he chose to use those failures as learning points and stepping stones to understanding what doesn’t work and why to eventually get to what does. And finally, we arrive at the story of Walt Disney. His success too didn’t come easily. His rejections started early in life when he was fired from his company as a young man because his boss said he lacked creativity. His first animation company failed, leaving him in a lot of debt that he didn’t have the resources to repay. At one moment in his life, it was said to have gotten so bad that he had to eat dog food to survive. Despondent and with nothing to lose, Walt Disney traveled to Hollywood. There too things didn’t get much better. He faced a barrage of rejection, was told he would never make it, and that Mickey Mouse-his passion project- was destined to fail. Well, I guess the joke is on those people as his company is one of the most, if not the most, well-known companies in the world. Almost every child has watched at least one movie or show from this company, and Mickey Mouse is a big icon and a very lovable character.

This shows how much perseverance can help you in life. Don’t let rejection and failure drag you down. Be like those people who took things in stride and who walked the same road we are but are now sitting at the top. Failure is just another block in the road of our life, we just have to be willing to make a way to move past it.