The Power of Perseverance

Yesterday, I read an RWR interview with bestselling author Cindy Dees, the penultimate chapter of "Outliers" by Malcolm Gladstone, and something else that skips my mind. Each author had something evergreen to say about the power of perseverance.

Sometimes, the most ancient lessons are the most timeless, particularly proverbs and sayings about the power of hard work, of the determination to keep trying, and of the self-discipline involved in getting up every day ("every day" is important) earlier than ones fellows, struggling longer to solve a  seemingly impossible problem than ones rivals, putting in the extra effort to complete a task and also to do optional extra tasks, to not procrastinate, and to make good use of discretionary time.

For authors and writers, this may mean that every day is a "NaNoWriMo" day, and by hook or by crook they write 5,000 words, or whatever their goal might be.  National Novel Writing Month is November, btw.

For rice farmers (per Outliers), this might mean a 360-day, dawn-to-dusk year, with three consecutive crops.

For students, it might mean getting up an hour or two earlier than everyone else to log in extra time in libraries or on computers --or whatever the newest technologies may be-- and doing more with their vacations than chilling.

For older insights, check out Walpole's Gothic novel The Castle of Otranto, and also The Castle of Perseverance (and when I studied these works, "perseverance" was pronounced "per-SEV-er-ance" rather than "per-se-VERE-ance".)

Here is a collection of thought-provoking and inspiring quotes on the subject of perseverance.
http://www.goodreads.com/quotes/tag/perseverance

Happy Labor Day!
Rowena Cherry