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Winning the long game
“Great works are performed not by strength, but by perseverance.”
- Samuel Johnson
We hear it all the time. Success does not happen overnight, and if it does, it is most likely due to long term effort behind the scenes. The most successful careers and businesses are the ones that endure over time. They are usually filled with ups and downs, providing moments of victory and defeat. Tesla Motors has famously had a couple brushes with bankruptcy. Today, Tesla leads the way in a competitive electric vehicle market, establishing a big head start on companies like Ford and GM. It takes a mix of patience, persistence and resilience to sustain anything that stands the test of time.
Think about all of your biggest successes in life. They required a lot of your time and energy. Obtaining degrees. Building a business. Raising children. If you have done any of these, you know you had to be in it for the long haul. You knew you could not just quit whenever the going got tough. You made a commitment. You were not going to let yourself or anyone else down. Through the long nights and overwhelming days, you persisted and did not let pitfalls or setbacks prevent you from following through, not matter what.
I have to remind myself sometimes how I have persisted through the resistance to achieve my biggest accomplishments in life. It took a lot of…
