Have you ever set a goal for yourself, and been completely excited to do it, but then your excitement fizzled? Me, too. It usually happens when the goal is more long-term, right?
In Plan or Fail, Your Choice, I mentioned my pushup challenge. It’s one of those physically and mentally challenging long-term goals (for me, maybe not someone who’s super fit) that is really easy to drop. But, I haven’t.
My family friend you met in that earlier post wanted to know the “why” behind my pushups. Simon Sinek is famous for posing this question as it applies to work and leaders, and I think it’s just as useful when applied to building a habit.
What keeps a person pushing to the end goal? What’s the “why?” Yes, it’s true that we’re all different, but here’s where some of us are the same: persistence, tenacity, endurance — whatever you want to call it — some of us have a lot more of it than other people. It’s considered a personality trait and is associated with conscientiousness (De Fruyt, Van De Wiele, & Van Heeringen, 2000).
Let me be clear — persistence from a psychology perspective is “voluntary continuation of a goal-directed action in spite of obstacles, difficulties, or discouragement” (Dean, 2018). It’s not the same as resilience (we’ll talk about that another time.)
So if it’s a personality trait, can we become more persistent? If so, how? Dean (2018) offers several ideas, among them, are finishing what you start, but doing it ahead of schedule; and, set a goal and create a plan to stick to it. Easy, right? Nope. But you already knew that. It’s probably gonna hurt a little.
Like pushups.
But, once your body gets used to doing wall pushups, you can move to knees-on-floor pushups, and before you know it, you’ll be doing military pushups. Each position becomes easier. You begin to celebrate the small successes. When you do that, you’re encouraged to “keep moving forward” (Gotta love Walt Disney.)
This is how you build persistence. It’s one bite-size step at a time + celebrating successes along the way.
References:
- Cloninger, C.R.; Svrakic, DM; Przybeck, TR (December 1993). “A psychobiological model of temperament and character”. Archives of General Psychiatry. 50 (12): 975-90.
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doi :10.1001/archpsyc.1993.01820240059008. PMID 8250684. - De Fruyt, F; Van De Wiele, L; Van Heeringen, C (2000). “Cloninger’s Psychobiological Model of Temperament and Character and the Five-Factor Model of Personality”. Personality and Individual Differences. 29 (3): 441–452.
doi :10.1016/S0191-8869(99)00204-4. ISSN 0191-8869. - Dean, B. “Persistence.” Retrieved from https://www.authentichappiness.sas.upenn.edu/newsletters/authentichappinesscoaching/persistence
