Perseverance Quotes

“No one is perfect. We all have bad days. It’s okay to feel a little discouraged. But to give up? To not even try? That is criminal. ‘Disgraceful,’ Marcus Aurelius would say, ‘for the soul to give up when the body is still going strong.’ All of us have fallen short in the last year…and the years before that. We broke our resolutions. We made the same mistakes again and again. We were ‘jarred, unavoidably, by circumstances,’ as Marcus said. But now it’s time to pick ourselves up and try again. We have to keep going. We can’t give up. Because the alternative is unthinkable.”
Ryan Holiday, Daily Stoic Blog

“You just have to go on when it is worst and most helpless. There is only one thing to do with a novel and that is to go straight on through to the end of the damn thing.”
Ernest Hemingway

…Yet.

“Almost everybody can stay excited for 2 or 3 months. A few people can stay excited for 2 or 3 years. But a winner will stay excited for 30 years or however long it takes to win.”
Art Williams

“It’s a disgrace in this life when the soul surrenders first while the body refuses to.”
Marcus Aurelius, Meditations, via The Daily Stoic (Page 383)

“Anyone can get lucky. There’s no skill in being oblivious, and no one would consider that greatness. On the other hand, the person who perseveres through difficulties, who keeps going when others quit, who makes it to their destination through hard work and honesty? That’s admirable, because their survival was the result of fortitude and resilience, not birthright or circumstance. A person who overcame not just the external obstacles to success but mastered themselves and their emotions along the way? That’s much more impressive. The person who has been dealt a harder hand, understood it, but still triumphed? That’s greatness.”
Ryan Holiday, The Daily Stoic (Page 278)

“[On learning how to play the banjo] I thought, if I stay with it, then one day I will have been playing for forty years, and anyone who sticks with something for forty years will be pretty good at it.”
Steve Martin, via So Good They Can’t Ignore You (Page 98)

Remember this for the next one.

Tony Robbins Quote on Staying Committed to Decisions, But Flexible in Approach

“Stay committed to your decisions, but stay flexible in your approach.”
Tony Robbins

Beyond the Quote (316/365)

This young man was told he wouldn’t be able to attend his Martial Arts tournament because he was exposed to someone who tested positive for COVID-19. He was told he would be quarantining at home for 2 weeks instead. But, rather than miss the tournament altogether, the team who orchestrated the tournament offered him and his family a virtual option instead. The family agreed.

David Goggins Quote on Callousing Your Mind and How I Ran A Marathon Without Running Training

“It takes twenty years to gain twenty years of experience, and the only way to move beyond your 40 percent is to callous your mind, day after day. Which means you’ll have to chase pain like it’s your damn job!”
David Goggins, Can’t Hurt Me

Beyond the Quote (235/365)

On Sunday, August 23rd, 2020, I ran my second marathon. I didn’t follow any specific running plans and did but only one training run (13.1 miles) leading up to it the week before. The most I had done besides that was a mile or two around my block at any given time in the whole year prior. Why do I tell you this? Because while I didn’t do any official running training for that run, I have been training my body for war for over two decades. And if you start doing the same, your body might be able to perform in ways that surpass your wildest expectations as well.

“‘History has failed us, but no matter’ serves as my thesis statement. I believe history has failed almost everybody who is ordinary in the world …I am also arguing that the discipline of history has failed. It is not that historians aren’t doing their jobs but rather that the memory of history has been reconstructed by the elite, because the overwhelming majority of ordinary people rarely leave sufficient primary documents; they do not have others recording their lives in real time. The phrase ‘but no matter’ is a statement of defiance. It doesn’t matter that history has failed us because ordinary people have persisted anyway. This idea gives me an enormous amount of strength and hope as a writer because I am an ordinary person. Those of us who may be women of color, immigrants, or working class aren’t often meant to be people who write novels about ideas, but no matter.”
Min Jin Lee, The Guardian

“Mental toughness is persistence not intensity.”
James Clear, Blog

Seth Godin Quote on Facing Failure So That You Can Keep Playing (and Win)

“If I fail more than you do, I win. Built into this notion is the ability to keep playing. If you get to keep playing, sooner or later you’re gonna make it succeed. The people who lose are the ones who don’t fail at all, or the ones who fail so big they don’t get to play again.”
Seth Godin

Beyond the Quote (121/365)

If you try and you fail—and you quit—you lose. If you try and you fail—and you adjust and try again—you win. The ultimate failure in life isn’t the failures we inevitably stumble upon from our trials, it’s the failure to not try (or to stop trying) at all. Without trial in life, you defer to passivity. You choose to watch rather than play. And while it’s fun to watch sometimes, playing is where all of the magic happens. Playing is the active process of interacting with your surroundings in a way that allows you to learn. When you try, your whole being makes an incalculable number of adjustments and improvements so that you can better play moving forward. You just can’t do that from the sideline.

“Sticking things out is overrated, particularly if you stick out the wrong things. In fact, I think you’d be much better off quitting most of what you do so you have the resources to get through the hard slog I call the Dip. The challenge, then, is to not quit in the Dip, but instead to quit everything else so you have the focus to get through the slog of what matters.”
Seth Godin, Whatcha Gonna Do With That Duck?

Beyond the Quote (71/365)

What should we stick out and what should we quit? I can tell you that the list of things we should stick out is far smaller than the list of things we should quit. And after some reflection, what you might find is that your list of things that you’ve been sticking out is WAY bigger than you might have imagined it to be and the things you SHOULD be sticking out might not even be making it to your daily to-do list at all. My instinct tells me that the follow 6 things are worth sticking out without explaination: Reading, Writing, Exercising, Meditating, Learning, and Connecting.

“Work is finding yourself alone at the track when the weather kept everyone else indoors. Work is pushing through the pain and crappy first drafts and prototypes. It is ignoring whatever plaudits others are getting, and more importantly, ignoring whatever plaudits you may be getting. Because there is work to be done. Work doesn’t want to be good. It is made so, despite the headwind.”
Ryan Holiday, Ego is the Enemy

Beyond the Quote (69/365)

Why do all of this work at all? Why show up when it’s raining and cold? Why push through writing tasks when Netflix is one click away? Why keep working when you’re getting praised and approved of for what you’ve already done? Why not stay indoors, become complacent, relax, and soak in the compliments you’ve already received? …Well, because that’s not how your best work comes to life—that’s why. And that task of bringing to life your best work, may be your most important calling on this earth.

“The universal truth is beyond question – the only people who excel are those who have decided to do so.” ~ Seth Godin

Beyond the Quote (36/365)

Excelling is optional. And so is the opposite. The path of least resistance is the path most people decide to follow. Why wouldn’t that be the case? Naturally, we are lazy creatures. We’re wired to conserve energy—both by expending less (moving less) and storing more (fat on your body)—so that we don’t starve to death if we can’t get more food. These were critical adaptations that were made over the course of our existence as humans that kept us alive during harsh periods of existence.

“Really successful people feel the same lack of motivation as everyone else. The difference is that they still find a way to show up despite the feelings of boredom.” ~ James Clear, Atomic Habits

“The people with the best self-control are typically the ones who need to use it the least. It’s easier to practice self-restraint when you don’t have to use it very often. So, yes, perseverance, grit, and willpower are essential to success, but the way to improve these qualities is not by wishing you were a more disciplined person, but by creating a more disciplined environment.” ~ James Clear, Atomic Habits