Doing Whatever It Takes

 Doing Whatever It Takes to Achieve Your Dreams and Goals

Tenacity… What Is It and How Does It Make a Difference?

“Let me tell you the secret that has led me to my goal. My strength lies solely in my tenacity. “ ~ Louis Pasteur

Here, I want to introduce you to the concept of tenacity and how it can help you reach your goals and dreams in all areas of your life. Let’s start by taking a look at what tenacity is. Per definition, it’s the ability to grip something firmly, it’s staying determined, and being persistent. In other words, a tenacious person will set a goal, make a plan, and then work at doing whatever it takes until he or she reaches the goal.

It’s easy to see how tenacity and working on increasing your own ability in this area will help you in all areas of your life.

Increased tenacity will help you get more done at work.  You’ll find it easier to work through even the hardest tasks, get projects finished on time, and with that earn the respect of your boss and your peers. Hopefully, your tenacity here will translate into moving into higher positions and earning higher wages.

Tenacity becomes even more important when you decide to go into business for yourself. Without a boss looking over your shoulder and giving you direction on what to work on, you have to become tenacious and persistent to make it work and be successful.

It doesn’t stop at work. Becoming more tenacious will help you around the house as well. You get in the habit of tackling projects on a regular basis and keeping up with a cleaning and maintenance schedule becomes a breeze. The end result is that your house is in better shape than ever, and since you’re working on it a little at a time, you have plenty of time left for the fun stuff.

Speaking of which… tenacity will even help you when it comes to your favorite hobbies. You’ll get better, quicker, at whatever it is you like to do in your spare time when you work on it consistently. It doesn’t matter if it’s tennis, playing the piano, or woodworking. Practice makes perfect, and tenacity will make you practice more and try new things.

Tenacity will even make you a better parent. You’re setting a good example for your children when you work on whatever it is you want to achieve until you get there. This, in turn, will serve your kids well in school and well into adulthood as they pick up this tendency towards tenacity from you.

In other words, tenacity is a skill and habit well worth pursuing that will have a positive impact on all areas of your life.

Another term we often use in this context is perseverance. I fact, I will use the two words almost interchangeably throughout this report. Let’s wrap up this short introduction by quickly going over what we’ll cover in this tenacity report.

We’ll start with a discussion on why tenacity is important. We’ll talk about the power of perseverance, the danger of distraction, and why we tend to give up (and how to stop doing that). Next, we take a look at talent and how we can “outwork” it by being tenacious. After that, I have plenty of tips and ideas for you to become more tenacious in all areas of your life. Let’s dive in and take a look at why tenacity is important and something we should work on.

Why is Tenacity Important?

In the introduction, we looked at how tenacity can have a positive impact on all areas of our lives from work to raising our children. That alone probably has you convinced that working on tenacity and perseverance is a good idea. Let’s dig a little deeper now and get more specific about what tenacity and doing whatever it takes can do for us and how it can help us get ahead in life.

The main reason tenacity is so important is because it’s how you reach your goals and dreams. It’s the secret ingredient in any recipe for success. If you can make yourself stick to your guns and keep going, you’ll often get to where you want to go, no matter what the circumstances and obstacles.

The Power of Perseverance

The old saying goes “If at first, you don’t succeed, try… try again”. It’s great advice and if you follow it, it will serve you well throughout your lifetime. There’s a lot of power in sticking it out, persevering and developing a sense of tenacity. More often than not, it’s the simple act of keeping going and trying again and again that leads to success.

There are always people and events that keep you from staying your course until you succeed. Sometimes it’s the critic who tells you that it will never work. Other times it’s a new idea or a new tool that makes you consider changing course. We’ll talk about the dangers of either one of those scenarios a little further on in this chapter. For now, let’s focus on the good things that can happen when you persevere.

When we manage to persevere and get in the habit of working on something until we reach our goals on a regular basis, we can achieve just about anything we put our mind to. You see it all around you. The small businesses in your town that thrive are the ones where the owners work and innovate week in and week out. The restaurants with the best reputation and the longest lines are the ones that focus on great food and good customer service day after day, and night after night. The online marketer that makes it is the one that works on his business night after night until he makes enough to quit his day job. The list goes on and on and it isn’t just businesses. The student who does well in school is the one that does homework each night and studies without fail. The neighbor with the prettiest flower garden is the one who works in it throughout the year by doing whatever it takes.

Tenacity in whatever you set your mind to isn’t just about putting in the most hours. It’s about a gaining experience and learning as much as you can along the way. It’s about getting better at your craft. It’s about innovating and having your hand on the pulse so you can react to changes in your environment. When you are tenacious in what you do, you will see advantages and opportunities that others will overlook. That, as much as putting in the hours required, will give you a distinct advantage over everyone else. Tenacity and perseverance are powerful forces that you want to use to your best advantage in all areas of your life.

The Danger of Giving Up Too Soon

Now let’s look at what happens when you choose to ignore tenacity. Instead of making it a habit of sticking with a plan and working on something until it succeeds, you may be tempted to give up just a little too soon.

You stop trying to work out your error in a report and admit defeat to your boss. You give up on trying to build your own business on the side and go back to focusing full time on a job you hate. Or maybe you stop working on your business and decide to try a different one instead. You give up on trying to repair your toilet and call in a plumber. You give up on gardening after two years of meager crops.

There are not one, but two big dangers of giving up too soon. The first is that you may be giving up just a little too soon. Often, when we’re at our lowest, and ready to call it quits, we’re very close to having a breakthrough. You may be one more try, one more push, or one more big effort away from making it work. I’m sure you’ve seen the cartoon image of the person digging for gold, or a treasure and giving up just inches before they reach it. Use that mental image anytime you’re tempted to give up. Use it to keep going just a little while longer.

Yes, there are times when it makes sense to give up and try something else. More often than not, though, we give up too soon. Be certain that what you’re trying to do is not possible, or the goal you’re trying to reach is unreachable before you give up.

The second danger of giving up is that you’ve essentially wasted all the time and effort you’ve put into your endeavor. It doesn’t matter if you’ve been logging hours in a project at work, tackled a home improvement project, or gave a new hobby or craft a try. If you’re giving up, all that time and effort will have been for nothing. If that’s not a great reason to stay tenacious and persevere, I don’t know what is.

The reasons why we’re tempted to give up are plenty. Some days we simply lose the initial excitement and drive we had at the beginning of a project. We lose interest and it simply seems to take too long, or the project is harder than anticipated.

Another time when it’s hard not to give up is when progress slows and we don’t reach our goals as quickly as hoped. This is particularly true when it’s hard to measure progress. It’s a struggle to stay motivated when you’re not sure you’re moving in the right direction.

Other times we’re our own worst critic. We second guess ourselves and lose the initial confidence we had in the project and our ability to see it through. We get that little voice in our head telling us to just give up because we won’t see success. Tenacity can help us silence that voice and keep going.

I hope this information encourages you to give this whole “Tenacity” thing a serious try. Later on in this report, I have some great tips for you being and becoming more tenacious. Just because you’re not a tenacious person right now, doesn’t mean it has to stay that way. But first, let’s look at one more reason why it’s important to work on this and persevere.

Stop Getting Distracted – Doing Whatever It Takes Requires Focus

The last big reason why tenacity is important is because it will keep you from constantly getting distracted. I’m sure you’ve experienced this yourself at work or at home. You’re working away on a project, happily making progress, and then suddenly something new pops up. You get an idea for a new project or a different take on what you’re already working on. You see a tutorial for something fun and exciting you want to try. Or maybe a co-worker or friend approaches you with a request or favor. It doesn’t matter if the distraction is internal or external. Without tenacity and perseverance, it’s easy to allow it to pull you in a different direction. If you allow it to do that, you lose momentum and what you’re currently working on may come to a grinding halt. It’s hard to make progress and reach your goals when you continue to get distracted and jump from task to task. Let me give you a visual to help you understand and more importantly remember why tenacity is so important to avoid getting distracted.

Let’s say your goal is to push a car up the road. You have three different cars to choose from. You start with the blue car and push it for a little bit. It’s the smallest of the bunch, and your first thought is that it will be the easiest to push. But it’s hard work. You get it to roll and it is slowly picking up speed. Then you notice that the yellow car has bigger tires so each rotation would get you further up the hill. They also seem smoother, which should cause less friction. You abandon your blue car efforts and start pushing the yellow car. Again, it’s hard work. You barely start to get it rolling and are still pushing hard when a red car catches your eye. For one reason or another, you decide this will be even easier to push. It’s a distraction that again takes you away from your current task and you start pushing it.

Here’s the problem. Whenever you push a car, the hardest part is getting it moving. Once it gains a little bit of speed, the momentum will make it much easier to keep pushing it along. The same holds true for most projects at work and at home. Getting started and gaining some momentum is often the hardest part. Without tenacity, we don’t make it past that hard initial period and instead move on to the next project. In our car example, we could have long moved much further up the road, finding it easier to push if we’d only stuck to the first car. In our work and home projects and dealings, it’s the same. We’re able to make a lot more progress and reach our goals quicker if we stick to one at a time and see it through until the end.

Thrive on Your Past Success

Last but not least, let’s talk about one of my favorite remedies for those days when you feel like throwing in the towel. Since that’s not an option, you need to boost your morale, give yourself some much-needed confidence, and above all prove to yourself and those around you that you can be tenacious and persevere.

The best way to do this is to look back at your past successes. Think back on times when you’ve done well. Think back on times when you surprised yourself with what you were able to do. Review old notebooks, journals, photographs or any other tangible evidence you have of your accomplishments and use them to refuel your confidence and enthusiasm. Rinse and repeat whenever you need a little extra boost.

Tenacity is a wonderful ability and habit to get into. I hope you take the time to give each of these tips and ideas a try. More importantly, I hope you succeed in becoming a more tenacious person, a person who grabs life by the horns and reaches his or her goals and dreams by doing whatever it takes.

We’ve covered a lot about tenacity here. We discovered what exactly it is and why it is important in all areas of your life. I hope I have convinced you that it is a habit and personality trait well worth developing and one that will serve you well throughout the rest of your life. With tenacity, you can overcome just about any obstacle and build the life you want. It will help you in your work, in your business and even in your personal life. As you’ve seen, it can even help you overcome a lack of talent for what you want to accomplish.

While not all of us are born with tenacity, it’s something we can learn. It’s a habit we can develop. Throughout the last chapter, I shared quite a few different tips with you on how to do that. Give them a try, work on being a little more tenacious each day, and it won’t take you long to make it an integral part of who you are and what you do.

Above all, I wish you much success in everything you set out to do. Remember, given tenacity you can outwork and outperform just about anything or anyone, and are able to overcome obstacles you thought were insurmountable. The ability to do anything is incredibly freeing and opens up possibilities and options you never thought existed for you. Go out there and get it!

I’m bestselling USA Today and Wall Street Journal author Connie Ragen Green. My goal is to help at least a thousand people to reach six-figures and beyond with an online business for time freedom and passive income and to simplify your life. Come along with me, if you will and let us discover how we may further connect to achieve all of your dreams and goals. This is also why I want you to think about tenacity and the importance of doing whatever it takes. Perhaps my “Monthly Mentoring Program” is right for you.