Perseverance
by Michael S. Tyrrell
September 8, 2020
“Therefore, since we are surrounded by such a great cloud of witnesses, let us throw off everything that hinders and the sin that so easily entangles. And let us run with perseverance the race marked out for us.” – Hebrews 12:1
Hey there Wholetonians!
One of my all time favorite quotes is “A man with an experience is never at the mercy of a man with an argument.” It is amazing how often people tell great men and women that what they are doing cannot be done! Believe me, for every great song there are hundreds of mediocre ones; the electric light bulb failed 10,000 times before it lit; every time a record is broken, the previous contenders came up short. Good men quit, great ones never do!
I write to you today from experience. From my youth, people were always telling me that I couldn’t do the things I was doing, that I was a dreamer, yet, if something was broken, I could fix it…every time. I didn’t know how I knew what I knew, but I always believed that I could do anything and that the only way I could fail was to stop trying. Before long, at the ripe old age of 8, I had already composed songs and learned to read music by rhyming: “E, G, B, D, F, names of the lines of the treble clef” and “F, A,C,E, it’s as easy as can be.”
One day I woke up and decided that I would dig a hole to China! By the time my mother discovered my plan and made me abort my mission, I had already hit the water table and had dug a hole so deep that I had a hard time getting out of it! Little did I know that this divine persistence, this “never give up” ethic, had a name—perseverance.
Perseverance will let you stare down the barrel of impossibility and see nothing but possibility. I recently watched a film titled, “The Martian.” In the film, an astronaut is stranded on Mars, and against all odds, with great perseverance and ingenuity, he survives until NASA is able to rescue him.
In order to achieve perseverance, you must absolutely overcome the fear of failure. If you lose the fear of failure, even if you fail…you will try again and again and again, until you succeed. Believe me, when you finally succeed, you quickly forget the frustration of past failures and see them in a different light, as priceless steps, instrumental to the process of your eventual success.
Perseverance has a specific language that must be adhered to. For example, never say never unless you use it like this: “I will never give up…can’t, never could!” I’m serious … what you say will determine what you will do. I realized that I could do anything because I believed I could, and nothing (no thing) is impossible for those who believe!
In the early 60’s, President John F. Kennedy quoted Thomas Jefferson, and those words have stuck with me throughout the years… “Never put off for tomorrow what you can do today.” To persevere, one cannot procrastinate. Do it, NOW.
If you put the words of this week’s letter into practice, you will succeed, however, it will not make you immune to the naysayers and armchair quarterbacks, who will tell you what you are doing cannot be done. My suggestion? Do it anyway!!! I believe in you … now it’s your turn to overcome and persevere. Success comes to those who refuse to quit.
Until next time…
Be Whole,
Michael S. Tyrrell
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