Successful People Change from Patience to Persistence!

That may sound like the same thing -- patience and persistence -- but there’s a huge difference. 

The losers in life, the people who just get by, may have admirable patience, but that may be all they have.  And passive patience, in and of itself, seldom brings victory.

Champions, however, practice active persistence. They keep on doing something until victory is achieved. 

To beef up your persistence, start by believing in the power of persistence. Great people invariably swear by it. They know that more often than not it pays off, and it pays big time.

Soichiro Honda, the founder of the Honda Motor Corporation affirmed that. He said, "Success is 99 percent failure." In other words, success will come if you just keep on keeping on, no matter how many setbacks or failures you encounter.

And Albert Einstein, who is always praised for his brilliance, said, "It's not that I'm so smart; it's just that I stay with problems longer."

Getting ahead, winning, succeeding, being a peak performer, reaching the top, whatever you want to call it, is NOT a mystery.  All the evidence indicates that it is possible -- even probable -- if you make these five little behavioral turns.

- Alan Zimmerman