Can take the place of persistence.
I’ve mentioned part of this quote from Calvin Coolidge previously. Here, as a matter of fact.
The whole quote—one of my favorites is:
Nothing in the world can take the place of persistence. Talent will not; nothing is more common than unsuccessful men with talent. Genius will not; unrewarded genius is almost a proverb. Education will not; the world is full of educated derelicts. Persistence and determination alone are omnipotent. The slogan Press On! has solved and always will solve the problems of the human race.
The reason I bring it up today is that I am thankful for persistence.
Today is the 180th straight day of blog posts here. Six months. Six months of figuring out something to post, of preparing it, of setting up the appropriate links, adding the appropriate tags, scheduling the post and hitting the Publish button.
If you think that’s easy, you’ve never tried it.
But, I made a commitment to myself that I was going to do it, and I have persisted. Some posts have been better than others. Some days, I have had to drag my feet out of the muck and mud of I-don’t-feel-like=it, and push through the boy-this-post-stinks, and overcome the is-anybody-there-nobody’s-reading-it-anyway bugaboo. (“Bugaboo” — ‘now there’s a word to lift your hat to.’*)
So, I’m thankful for persistence, today.
Every time you face a challenge you get better at it. Not only do you get better at achieving that particular goal, you get better at achieving all goals. Once you prove that you can, it’s very hard to fall back on ‘I can’t.’
I was reminded of this recently, not only by my 180 day anniversary, but also by one of those not-so-rare bursts of synchronicity in a post on this same topic over at Dumb Little Man. (Good blog, Dumb Little Man. Just FYI.)
Of course, later today, persistence in dieting (another of my current goals, albeit a bit half-hearted) will likely fall by the wayside. I’m thinking fresh baked chocolate cookies and vanilla ice cream—a treat I first had at Joe Allen’s in the heart of the Theatre District in NYC. (I think Joe Allen’s may be the first restaurant I ever went to in NY after I moved there—although I didn’t have the cookies and ice cream that time.)
You have to have a balance, after all. Dieting can pause for a moment for a little celebration.
180 days!
* Luce, William (and Emily Dickinson), The Belle of Amherst
