Focused Persistence

 

I have often been asked, what is the single most important factor necessary to summit Mt Everest or any high and difficult mountain for that matter. All the things like right equipment, training, goal, experience, etc. are important yet would come to nothing without perseverance to persist. And I feel this applies to anything in life, be it in your profession, family, business, ideologies, etc. Like I have often said that everything begins with a dream, an idea, with a goal and then you must take action in pursuit of that goal and dream, but then if you do not persist and continue to persevere with your action then you won’t reach where you wish to; be it the summit of a mountain or the summit of your chosen dream.

Without persistence all your dreams will be like a half baked cake or a half ripened mango. To see the fruition of our dreams there is no other way but being persistent.

Now whatever I wrote above is a no-brainer, and many have said it before. And most of you do persist, yet many do not get there, exactly where they wish to be. And here I would bring in another element to being persistent.

Focused Persistence.

If we are pursuing too many things at the same time then our focus is divided and therefore our efforts applied to each is diminished. Of course you can excel and achieve pretty much everything, but not all of them at the same time. I don’t believe in the dictum: jack of all trades master of none. I believe you can be jack and master of all trades but not at the same time.

When we have many goals, all we wish to achieve at the same time, it would end up paralysing our mind and body, because our mind wouldn’t be able to focus on any one of them in order to pursue and persevere and to reach the level where we wish to be.

We can climb many summits in our lives (I personally have over a thousand over 3000m) but no one can climb more than one summit at any given time.

In a nutshell: find your dream, focus upon it and then pursue it with focused perseverance and do not give up till you reach where you wish to.

Your journey would begin with a dream, and it will sustain through focus and finally through perseverance would you be able to conclude it to your satisfaction.