Never Give Up | Leadership Management International

What makes a person successful? In my series of articles on Steps To Success, I have written about the keys to achieving success.

The first step was Know Your Goals. You must know what you want before you can achieve it. Having clear-cut, written goals is the foundation for ultimately obtaining whatever you desire.
The next step is to Know Your Plan. Once you know what you want, you must determine how you are going to get there. A written plan is your road map to success; a way to crystallize your thinking and keep you from falling off track. Having a plan also helps you to anticipate and overcome obstacles that might otherwise keep you from attaining your goal.
Know Why You Want Your Goal is the third essential step to success. Without a “why,” you have no motivation, no desire to achieve what you have set forth for yourself. Motivation gives you the stamina to stay in it for the long haul, to continue to overcome obstacles and not to give into them. You must be self-motivated in order to achieve success.
In my last article, Believe Yourself To Success, I discussed the fourth imperative step to success which is Know You Can. Confidence is the force which propels you toward your goal. Without confidence, you will lack the knowledge that you can actually achieve your goal and not just dream about it. Belief is what creates the expectation of success.
The fifth and final step to success is to Never Give Up. Having a goal, a plan, desire, and confidence to achieve your goal isn’t enough. You must use that desire and confidence to follow through with your plan and ultimately achieve your goal. You must never quit. Ninety-nine percent of all failures come from quitting too soon. The reason most people fail to achieve their goals is because they give up on trying. Challenges and obstacles throw them off their path. You must develop the perseverance to say, “I will not quit” in the face of many difficulties.

A lack of desire is a common reason for quitting. If your goal is not something that burns deeply inside you, you might be tempted to throw in the towel at the first sign of a challenge. Your success potential increases exponentially with the amount of desire you have.

Along with desire, commitment is another important ingredient for perseverance. Commitment creates focus and fosters a willingness to work toward your goal at any cost. Most goals require a great deal of time and dedication, they are not obtained with instant gratification. Without the commitment to see a goal through to the end, most people will give up long before they have a chance to succeed. Complete commitment is the only way to achieve success. It sustains you when you feel like quitting, and rewards you when you succeed.

In order to have commitment to your goals, you must develop persistence. The following attitudes are what make up persistence:

Determination: Determination is a refusal to quit or give up. It means not giving mental recognition to the possibility of defeat. If you absolutely refuse to accept failure, you have virtually guaranteed your success.
Patience: Success is a long process. Without the patience to delay your gratification until you have achieved your goal, you will give up long before and settle for rewards with more instant gratification. A person’s maturity level is determined by their ability to delay gratification.
Pride: When you recognize that you are a unique individual with strong qualities and confidence, you develop a pride of knowing you can succeed no matter what. True pride is based on fulfilling your potential rather than comparing yourself with others.
Willingness To Risk: You must have the courage to take unusual actions and to take risks in order to achieve your goals. Success does not come easily. It requires innovation and stepping out on a limb in order to climb to the top.
Habit Formation: Persistence is a habit. Day after day, month after month, if you practice persistence, it becomes an automatic behavior.

William James gave us a powerful formula for developing new habits:

Commit to pay whatever price to develop the new habit.
Start immediately. Take every opportunity to substitute your new habit for your old behavior.
No exceptions. Developing a new habit is like rolling up a ball of string – if you fall back into your old habit you are letting the ball of string fall and completely unravel.

The final ingredient you need to never give up is to be thankful for adversity. When you face adversity, you use your full potential, you become more creative, more intense, and more confident that you can keep moving toward your goal. By looking at adversity in this way, you ensure that when you encounter it, you will not run or give up. You will look forward to the upcoming obstacles in your path and know that you can overcome them. Without adversity, there would be no reason to succeed.

You now have the essential steps to success and are ready to begin to climb your own ladder. You can do it – Never Give Up!

By Randy Slechta, CEO / President of Leadership Management International, Inc. a global leadership and organizational development company.