Persistence – DNA of success person
Have you encounter a scenario below:
You interviewing a person, let say Abu. He is passionate, this is exactly the job he dream of. His technical skill A+, attitude A+, communication skill A+. He score 99/100 during the interview. You hire him because you the potential in him.
During first few months of working, his performance is superb. He run faster than other, result is remarkable. Somehow, something happened. He have “some disagreement” in the work. After this incident happened, he become zombie, he feel demotivated. He walk slower than previous, his performance drop. You can feel the negative energy when you speak to him.
Situation above, will happen to everyone including you. It will happen in any company you go. Like it or not, you won’t have someone that is so motivate 365 days. In some point of your career, you will have “down time”, or “disappointing time”. Same as Abu. When this situation happen, you have 2 ways to handle this situation:
Choice A: Quit the job, and find another place that you think is better than current company. This is the most popular choice, 90% of people will choose this.
Choice B: Face the problem and sort it out. This is the harder choice, and most people will not choose this because they think the problem is not on their side. The problem is on the other side; mostly is problem with the boss or company.
Whether you choose A, or B, there is no right or wrong choice. The only things is you should ask yourself one question when you face situation like above:
“Which choice will you choose again, if you face with the same work problem like above, in your FUTURE NEW company?”
Spend some times and think about it. A or B.
After running the company for many years, I realize that there is one important attitude that normally success people have, while other don’t have — Persistence. Persistence on handling difficult situation, persistence on handling failure, persistence on working towards a target that so hard to achieve.
The Ugly Fact
Like it or not, you going to face with different problem in your life. Personal problem. Relationship problem. Career problem. Boss problem. Project problem. Staff problem and etc. There is no way you can run away from it, unless you die. Even you hide yourself in a no man island, you will still face problem like Not Enough Food problem, Cold Weather problem, Lonely problem and etc.
What I try to say is, life is full of problem. You have no way run away from problem.
Let talk about “disagreement” that Abu face. The “work problem” that most employee face. It is different for everyone, and different for every department. Some example is:
- Marketing dept: My boss give me a crazy target. Want me to bring in million of visitors to our website every month. This is 3x, 5x what we have achieved so far. Some more never increase my budget or resources.
- Sales dept: My boss say must hit 1 million sales by June. This is insane and even our best ever month is only 100k. Is 10x what we able able to achieve so far.
- Engineer dept: My boss always chase me to deliver fast. With limited resources, how can we do in 1 month for project that require 3 months to deliver. He just doesn't care about technical consequences and only want fast and fast.
- HR dept: My boss have no empathy. Keep saying only want A and B people, and ask C people to leave. Never give enough chance for other to improve and make our job so hard as HR to maintain compliance and good relationship with the other team.
and etc etc etc etc
Basically, normally the disagreement is start with your boss asking you do something not possible to achieve, or something that you think not logical. Worse is, after you voice it out with your boss, he still insist you doing so. You feel disappointing, and the disappointment make you demotivated. Just like Abu case. This is very normal reaction, 90% of people will feel the same, and react the same way as you.
Again, this happen in every company, the only different is you are face with different type of problems.
The Step 1 — Focus On Solution
So, how are the remaining 10% of people react when come to this kind of situation?
The remaining 10% of people is also human. They will also think their boss is “crazy”, the target is “impossible”. And this is what happen in their mind:
“Mmmm…that is crazy target! Damn! Mmmm….. let me think think, what should I do to make it happen? How can I start with? mmmm….”.
Their brain cell start to shift their complain, to solution. They start to think, what can they do to achieve those unreasonable target. You see the different?
These 10% of people focus on solution, instead of problem. This is the only yet big different between the 10% people and the remaining 90% of people. We call this — Step 1 : Focus on Solution, Not Problem.
The Step 2 — The Breaking Point
Then, these 10% of people will start to turn their idea into action. They execute their idea.
They will try this, try that. They have 30% of chance to success, and 70% of chance to failed. Most of the time, they will failed more than success. It will be repeat for few times. Failed, Success, Failed, Failed, Failed.
If they face failure for consecutive few times, this is where the second turning point will happened. Step 2: The Breaking Point.
Because they face failure and failure again, they start to lose their confident. They are people with high ambition and this make them set very high expectation about them self, in other words, PRESSURE. But because of continuous failure of few time, they start they lost direction. They feel very tired, some will cry too. Worse is, they start to self doubt about their own-self.
They reach the lowest point in their life — they break.
At this junction, half of the 10% people may quit. Some may take a long leave. Again, please do not judge them as weak, because they did try, they did stand up and face the challenge. It just that they not able to breakthrough this hurdle. This hurdle is way too big for them to handle at their age. They may able to handle it when they older, but just not at this point of time.
The Step 3 — Bounce Back
What will the last remaining 5% of people will do?
They will face the same situation like their peer. They failed, they lost direction, they lost confidence, self doubt. They are human too. In fact, it is ok to have down time. Everyone will have their lowest point of their life. You no need to feel shame about it. It is ok to cry, it is ok to failed.
What make them different than other is, after they down today, they bounce back the next day. They never let the “down time”drag long, sometimes 1 day, 2 days, maximum 3 days.
They will reset their mind, reset their energy. Tomorrow, they will start their day with step 1 again.
“What should I do? How to achieve the target using other method? I have tried this and failed, what can I try different?”
This process will repeat. Again, they will failed again, down again, bounce back again along the way.
What they don’t realize is, everytime they bounce back, they become stronger than previous.
If mental strength can be measure by kg, 1st time they capable to handle 50kg work pressure. After down and bounce back, they capable to handle 70kg work pressure. After another down and bounce back, they capable to handle 100kg work pressure and more. This cycle will repeat because, “Life is full of problem”. This person choose to face it, try it, conquer it. Whenever they success to breakthrough it, they growth to next level of new self.
Those who won the Olympic medal, have go through this kind of cycle of failure and bounce back hundreds, thousands of time until they can success. Those successfully climb to the peak of their career, also have go through hundreds of failure and down time, before they become success today. Nothing is come easy. All this, require you to be PERSISTENCE.
How about you?
