We can understand perseverance as a continuous drive to reach our goals and improve our skills and performance through persistent effort. It is a form of purposefulness and goal-orientation, which requires long-term commitment and discipline. It is fueled by passion.

Our potential is one thing. What we do with it is quite another. While aptitude, skills, and a basic degree of talent are important as determiners of success, they are not as significant as hard work and trying, again and again, to improve what we do.

Perseverance and resilience are also closely related to our ability to learn from our failures. Perseverant and resilient people deal more productively with failure.

Perseverance and Resilience can be learned. In other words, we can all practice becoming grittier and work on our ability to persevere.

1.     Interest

2.     Practice

3.     Purpose

4.     Hope

We must, first of all, follow our passion. That entails discovering what our core passions are. This process involves curiosity, trying new things, experimenting, and actively seeking to develop and stay with our interests.

Then, we have to practice. But we must practice deliberately, by honing in on our weaknesses and Achilles heels, setting challenging stretch goals, and incorporating feedback.

Purpose refers to our desire to contribute to making the world a better place and to helping others. It can be a core driving force for passion.

Hope, the fourth and final ingredient, is related to the belief that our efforts matter and that they can improve our future.

 “It’s your reaction to adversity, not adversity itself that determines how your life’s story will develop.”

― Dieter F. Uchtdorf