Consistently staying with something you’re determined to do may be the secret to your happiest life. But how do you know the difference between fruitful perseverance, and banging your head against the wall to your own detriment? Bill Whittle and Zo Rachel have felt the pain and pleasure that come from the art of perseverance.
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8 replies on “Whatever It Takes is What It Takes: The Missing Ingredient to Your Success”
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This might be a few days late, but there is a quote/misquote/joke that was used in the video game World of Warcraft a few years back when I was playing it.
“If you shoot for the stars and hit the moon, do not be ashamed, for you have aspired to greatness…and the moon had it coming.” (A reference to a quote by classical Chinese philosopher Confucius: “If you shoot for the stars and hit the moon, it’s ok. But you’ve got to shoot for something. A lot of people don’t even shoot.”
I love Bill’s “when opportunity knocks, you better have your bags packed” description of good luck. It shows that looking for a good opportunity is an active process that involves a lot of sweat preparation.
Yeah, I like that it tries to divert the “you were just lucky” fatalism that some have. All sorts of other cliches have similar ideas and the usual line in any movie about fate has some character saying “I/we make our own fate.”
Opportunity might knock on the door, but you have to get off the sofa and open the door to get your chance. It won’t just get dropped in your lap.
Malcolm Gladwell’s book, “Outliers” talks about persistence and the 10,000 rep rule.
That Dumb and Dumber reference…you mean something like this? lol
(Oh..FYI…your web host is screwing with me again!)
Bill hits a good point with actors. It’s so hard to break into the field and make a living after you do, there are so few who actually make it to global or even national prominence — That the people who do succeed in acting are massively egocentric and egotistical.
Some of which is deserved. In order to rise to the top of their profession they must be literal superstars both in their perseverance and their performances. Even when they finally get that “big break”, they have to be tops in their field and they have to nail it or that big break will be wasted and may not come around again.
We see this egocentrism and egotistical attitude often in those who set high goals and hit them. They think that because they’re experts at something they must be really good at everything else. It just ain’t so. I’ve worked with doctors and other noted professionals who thought they knew more about IT than me, the person they hired to handle their computer systems. To their own disastrous detriment sometimes. The thing about IT is there’s always a disaster waiting just around the corner and when you cut corners you are liable to run into one head on. Eventually the odds run out and it’s all over but the crying.
Actors are like that too, they think they’ve achieved an acme that gives them credibility outside their profession. The truth is that actors know less about politics and political ideologies than anyone on this website and there are a few in here that don’t know a lot on that topic. They still know more than Meryl Streep or Robert DeNiro because that kind of actor knows virtually nothing at all.
Their entire lives have been bound up in the goal of achieving a successful acting career and once they got that far, the point where they have a voice that can be heard across a broad area and spectrum, they’re so insulated from the real world that their opinions on anything but acting are baseless and absurd.
On some level they must know that. Because on some level all but the most imbecilic in the general public know it too. Yet they’ll make their little anti-Trump, climate change, save the spotted owl and all those type “public service” proclamations and we all look at them and say “STFU you imbecile” anyway.
It’s ironic that we live in such an amazing nation where even the poor are fat and have cell phones but those who have benefitted the most from this fantastic country are the ones who most want to destroy it. Even more ironic is their reason for wanting that destruction is to please each other, their own peers. They may be filthy rich but they live shallow and empty lives. That’s the price they willingly paid for fame and fortune and it’s a bargain with the Devil.
Zo, I have parts on those rovers on Mars. What are you inventing?