Truly, it is a Powerful Force in Driving Us Forward.
After I Published, I had a Good Friend and Fellow Creator write a Comment that was Wonderful and I wanted to Discuss Today...
"I think consistency is a twin sister of persistence." - Lana V. Lynx
Lana, I Appreciate You Tremendously, and just wanted You to Know.
And, Indeed, Lana is Absolutely Correct.
With Consistency You Need Persistence.
They Go Hand-in-Hand.
Twins.
Yet, I also Understand This...
So Many People are Challenged with Being Persistent.
We Live in a World where People have been Taught to Expect Overnight Success...
Microwave Results...
And that If You Fail to Get those types of Results...
Then "You" are "Wrong" and Doing Things "Incorrectly".
Then We Beat Ourselves Up...
And Struggle to Be Persistent.
It is a Challenge to "Keep Going" when the World Continues to Tell You that You are Wrong.
Which Begs the Question...
How Do We Stay Persistent?
What Do We Need to have the Desire to Keep Going and Stay Consistent?
There are a Few Ingredients that are Really Helpful.
The First is to have Proper Expectations.
We Create Ideas of what "Success" Will Look Like for Us.
But there are Problems with these Ideas...
First, is that We have to Stop Believing the Lies of Society.
Few People are "Truly" Overnight Successes in Reality...
And the Less than 1% that Happen Upon Overnight Successes "Never" Repeat those Successes in the Long Term.
There is a Reason You Hear about "One Hit Wonders".
To Have Success, and More Importantly "Keep" Success is a Process...
One that is Built Over a Long Period of Time.
Most Leaders We Talk about as "Successful" have actually "Done" Little to Nothing to Obtain that Success, and are Often Resting on Laurels they Did Not Deeply Earn.
That is the Reality.
Second, Our Future Ideas of Success are based on Who We Are Today...
And We have Not Yet Reached Our Potential Today.
What these Ideas Fail to Take Into Account is Our Ability to Grow.
What Occurs is that We "Think" We can Obtain Greater Results than are Possible in the Short Term...
But We Underestimate the Results that are Possible in the Long Term...
Becuase We Do Not Know What We Have Not Yet Grown Into.
Which Brings us to Something Incredibly Important for Persistence...
We "Need" to be Growing to Be Persistent.
We Constantly Need to be Cultivating Ourselves Further.
If We are Consistent without Growth...
This becomes a Recipe for Boredom...
And Boredom Causes Us to Not Want to Be Peristent...
Because, as Humans, We have an Innate Desire to Grow.
So, Persistance comes with Growth.
The More We Grow...
The Easier it is to Remain Persistent.
The Next Thing that is Incredibly Helpful for Persistence...
Are Flow States.
Flow States are where We Feel Our Best...
Perform Our Best...
Solve Problems More Quickly...
And Learn Faster.
But, there is something that is Incredibly Important about Flow when it comes to Persistence Specifically...
Flow States are Autotelic.
What this Simply Means is that We, as Humans, Seek Flow States for the Sake of the Flow State.
It is an End to Itself.
We, as Humans, Seek Flow States So Desperately, that some Individuals will Literally Risk their Lives "Without" Receiving "Anything" in Return...
No Pay...
No Awards...
Nothing Else is Needed...
All for the Sake of the Flow State.
That is How Far We are Able to Push Ourselves when We Obtain Flow States.
Which Means...
That if We Get into Flow States...
It is Much Easier to "Be" Persistent...
Because We, by Nature, Will Purposefully Seek that Get "More" of Whatever Puts us into Flow States.
Persistence becomes Natural with Flow States.
This is Another Secret to My Ability to Stay Consistent...
I am Constantly Finding Flow States.
I Find Flow States when I Write...
I Find Flow States when I Run and Participate in OCR Races...
I Find Flow States when I'm on Stage and Doing Interviews...
I Find Flow States in Worship....
I Find Flow States in My Interactions with my Family and with my Clients.
I have Constructed My Life in a way to Constantly Finding Flow States.
One Small Caveat though...
You Cannot Be in a State of "Perpetual" Flow.
It is Not Possible to "Always" be in Flow.
If someone Tells You It Is...
They are Lying and Do Not Know the Research Around Flow.
Flow States Consume High Levels of Bodily Energy (Mg-ATP)...
And You Body is Not Physically Able to Create Enough Energy (Mg-ATP) to Meet the Demands of Flow States.
Flow States Typically last in Chunks of 50 to 90 Minutes before You are Required to Rest and Allow Your Body to Restore its Supply of Energy (Mg-ATP).
There are Other States of Being that You can Be In Constantly...
For Instance, You can be in Bliss Perpetually, which is "Very Different" from the Emotion of Happiness but is a story for another time...
But High-Performance Flow States have a Time Limit.
And...
If you Get into Flow States Consistently...
It Makes Persistence Significantly Easier to Keep.
When You Combine these Three...
The Proper Expectations...
The Need to Grow and Cultivate Yourself...
And Finding Flow States in what You Do...
Persistence will Begin to Become Second Nature.
Your Body will be So In Tune with the Goals You Seek...
That You Begin to See a Path to Pursue these Goals Further...
Perhaps Even Until Your Final Day on Earth.
God-Willing, I Plan to Write Every Day for the Rest of My Life...
And I Hope that You Discover What will Drive You Forward to the Success that You Seek.
Are You Ready to Go Beyond Leadership?
Tired of Broken Algorithms and AI Slop?
Excited to Dive Deeper into Psychophysiological Mastery?
Want to Change The World?