ACT and Grow Rich - Part 8 of 13 - PERSISTENCE

Good evening, my name is Paul H. Flowers Jr. We're doing Act and Grow Rich, part 8 of 13. It's my take on Napoleon Hill's Think and Grow Rich, a classic from 1937, where he discusses the 13 principles of success. This week is the 8th step towards riches. Which is persistence. What is persistence? Persistence is quite frankly sustained effort, right? Sustained effort. Now, the funny thing about sustained effort, meaning the longer that you do something, the more it induces faith. And then the more faith that you have, the more effort you continue to put forward towards what you're doing. So it's like a circle almost. You can draw it out, sustained effort and the arrow over to faith. If you need more faith, keep going with your efforts. Now, you want to make sure that your efforts are sound, of course. You don't want to keep going in the wrong— excuse me— keep going in the wrong direction. You want to absolutely make sure that the efforts are sound and are looking and aiming towards some worthwhile thing. But however, you want to keep going with whatever those efforts are. Now, the author talks about willpower and desire, right? Willpower and desire as a portion of the formula in order to keep going at something. So yes, you can have the willpower to do it, and you'll have it backed by a strong desire, but that willpower and desire is only as good as the persistence that you attach to it in order to ensure that whatever it is that you want to see come to fruition comes to fruition. Think about it. So if I've got something that I want to do, you know, I know people that are starting their own businesses now. It's a a huge thing, especially in the modern society today where people are getting tired of bosses, getting tired of being mistreated, so they go out and now it's time to start their own business. Well, a lot of times when people do that, they'll give it 3 months, 6 months, 9 months, and then they might quit. So why is it that people don't actually persist? That's a huge thing that we want to talk about just a little bit tonight. And again, do some more research. There's a lot of reasons, but there's just a few that I'll talk about now. One of them being that they lack faith. And again, faith being something that's brought on by autosuggestion, being that belief in something or someone, namely yourself and your abilities to do a thing. A lot of people don't have it in terms of a strong sense of it, so much so that when the rocks come, when the bumps come, that they can keep going through it. So people don't persist, uh, one, because of a lack of faith. Another reason that people don't persist is because of a lack of confidence, and that's all about believing in you. We talked about it a few videos ago with the formula to assist in developing confidence, and please go back and review it. Watch these other videos just to make sure that you're up to date on these things. But that formula for self-confidence is key and keeping up that attitude that's necessary in order to persist. But again, without that self-confidence, that's one of the reasons why people choose not to persist. Excuse me. Now, it's much easier also to not do a thing. So we'll kind of couple that in with the idea of just being, quite frankly, lazy. It's much easier for those of my colleagues out there, and again, I know a lot of people that are going into business for themselves, so I kind of cater to that audience. But whatever it is you're doing, whether it be a path of study or what have you, you can't get lazy in your efforts or lazy in your language or lazy in your learning when you're taking on a new task or expanding your abilities with a task by turning it into some way to benefit yourself and your family for the future. There's just no room for it. However, people choose not to persist in their efforts because it's much easier not to. Think about it. When you were a child, most of the time someone made those decisions for you. They let you know when to eat, when to sleep, when to wake up, when to bathe, when to go to school, when to go to church, when all these things that you would do as a child, someone told you how to do them. As you grew up and went through school, the same thing. You followed a bell system. Essentially, a person had— say that you've been programmed to follow these orders in a certain way from a certain type of person, an authoritative figure. Well, then after 18, after college, you go into the adult world. Many people, most people start working their first job, and they're still being told what to do. They're not thinking of how to do it themselves, for themselves, by themselves, or along with other people, which we'll talk about next week in The Mastermind Principle. It's just not something that's absolutely taught, and it's absolutely the easiest thing in the world to just continue on with the way that you've been doing, right? Think about it. It's easy to go and allow somebody to simply just tell you what to do. Look, tell me what to do every day, this many hours a day. This is how long I need to work. Okay, then this is what I'll do. However, it's a different story when you're taking on that responsibility of putting those thoughts out there for what you want to bring into fruition, when you have to create those thoughts, when you have to make that schedule. That's a task, right? You got a lot of big decisions to make. You got people that you need to bring into the circle that you're gonna have to learn to trust in order to assist you with whatever this endeavor is, because regardless of what it is, you're going to have to work with other people, which is why this is one of the biggest skills that if you hadn't learned it, please take some time, read books like Dale Carnegie's How to Win Friends and Influence People and Robert, Robert Greene's 48 Laws of Power, I mean, because you're gonna have to learn how to work with people and how to have some internal power to balance yourself while you do so. A lot of times it takes humility, a lot of times it takes being humble, um, but to make these decisions to start and go out and do something on your own without having somebody over your shoulder consistently telling you what to do, how to do, what to think, and how to think, it's a lot of responsibility. And quite frankly, it's not for everybody. So it's entirely fine For the person that says, "Hey, I don't want that. I'd rather just go and do this 8 hours a day, 10 hours a day. They let me know how to get it done. I just go and do it," and that's fine, right? I got a lot of respect for the people in positions and professions where that's the norm. But for those of you out there that want more, again, this being the 8th step, persistence is going to be absolutely key in order to bring your dreams and desires to fruition You must persist. Another reason that people don't persist— persist, excuse me— that they have no purpose. They haven't taken the time, really that introspective type of time where you sit and you're not, you know, in front of the screens, you're not watching movies and YouTube and music, but you sit and ask yourself, why are you here? Think about it for a moment. You know, it's not meant to be this huge philosophical conversation But take the time to ask, why are you here? What is it that you feel your purpose is? Again, we're not trained in purpose thinking, and it's something that's absolutely necessary and quite frankly should be instilled in school systems so where people can learn to think of why they're here, right? Looking inside themselves and what they want to bring to the world. What kind of value do you want to bring to the world? So people without purpose tend not to persist because there's no reason that's greater than themselves. Now, what it absolutely takes to persist— excuse me— is first an understanding that persistence is something that is developed over time. Persistence doesn't come in 36 hours. Great if you're doing a 48-hour fast, right? You're 36 hours through. Now, just again, everything has a relative time frame to it. But typically for long-term projects, right, persistence takes time. So that faith is gonna have to be there through time, that sustained effort is gonna have to be there through time, and you're gonna have to keep recharging and refueling each one of them over and over and over in order to actually see this persistence start to take shape and form in terms of results of whatever it is that your organized planning and that goal that you put out there back in video 1 has led you to see as the endgame for whatever it is that you're looking to achieve. Again, it takes strong desire. Back in the first video, desire is going to be that foundation. You have to actually want something. Again, for those that don't, it's fine. A lot of respect for those that just want to do the same thing until perfect, right? The world needs people in every stage of life. And for those of you who want more, which a lot of time is the person that's rewatching the video of this either on Facebook or on YouTube, If you're wanting more, it's going to take that desire. It's going to take you to actually know what it is that you want. It's basically going to take you to want more than just what it is that you have right now so that you can start to have the plan in place, working with autosuggestion, developing that faith, making it a muscle that you're building upon day after day, week after week, month after month. It's gonna take time to develop the specialized knowledge. If you got a field or craft that you feel that you wanna make your profession, excuse me, you gotta learn about it. I know people now that are in the hair field, makeup field, teaching profession, right? And they're still learning. They're continuously growing and expanding their knowledge base on their subject in order to be more of a resource and a servant leader to the populations that they serve. So it takes a continual effort to continue learning to be able to be of service to those people that you want to serve in the future. Now, again, think about that endgame. You have to know what that endgame is, had to have planned it out and been able to put some logical steps in place to be able to actually see a pathway to getting to this end. And make sure that you take a moment to decide, right? This is actually what last week was about. Is having that decision that it's worth it. So whatever it is, whether it be building a business, building a house, finishing a degree, going to a new job, aiming for promotion, look at what it's going to look like once you get it and decide that it's worth it. And what is the "it" that we're talking about? Well, the effort that you're going to go through, the time that you're going to spend, the resources that you're going to have to bring into yourself and make sure that you have in order to essentially be worthy of the thing in which you want for your life. It's gonna take that increased faith and confidence, that belief in yourself, that practice and repetition of knowing that you're worth it and knowing that this cause is worth it, practicing whatever actions that you've got in place and making sure that— and when you practice and it takes you a little off course, to go back and reevaluate that plan, those steps that you're taking, to get yourself back in the correct direction to get you to that end goal. You have to have an absolute focus, meaning that you can only go really in so many directions at once. When it term— in terms of your, your definite chief aim or purpose, that's got to be the focus, right? That's got to be it. That's your focus. That's your number one thing, right? It's okay to have a two or three, but make sure the majority of your time is devoted to that Number one thing that's going to allow you to see more fruit in less time than just putting a little bit of time into it now, a little later, a little later, a little later. No, you put a lot of time into it now and a little bit of time for everything else. And again, it's a sacrifice. You have to sacrifice time with people, sacrifice time away from friends, sacrifice time away from the club or the bar or the video games or whatever it is that you like to do that's not a part of that definite chief aim or purpose You've got to put it to the side for just a little while until the thing that you're working on, that definite chief aim or purpose, is starting to bear fruit, right? At the point in which it bears fruit— now keep in mind, you can't just bring everything back that you put away because you put it away so that it would bear fruit. Because if now it's bearing fruit and you bring everything back that you were doing that wasn't helping it bear fruit, guess where that fruit's gonna go? It's gonna stop growing. Quickly, right? And it'll take even longer to then get back in that rhythm because now you've brought back the distractions that you had then trained yourself to not have in your life. So keep that in mind, that absolute focus and the— excuse me— and not to quit. Quite frankly, that's one of the biggest things in, in, uh, in this is, is again, we're talking about persistence Making sure that you don't quit. You have to keep going. I want you to write down this phrase, or type it in below if you're listening, "I will until." If you have a cause, if you have a purpose, if you have something that you're aiming for in life, type it in at the bottom. "I will until." And usually we would have the ellipsis after the until, but at this point, "I will until," period or exclamation point, meaning that that's it. There's nothing after that until. So I will until the end, right? The end being when you're no longer able to do it. When you're putting your efforts into it as if it's going to drive you to get to this goal that you'll give your last breath to it, that's because you've made a decision again, which was last week. You've cut off all other options. Like Will Smith said, he's willing to die, right, to make sure that this thing comes true, that this thing comes to fruition. Now that's belief, that's decision, that's cutting off all the other options or outs that you might have. So with that, again, make today your day. Ignore the naysayers. Write it down, type it in here, I will until, and get ready for next week. Next week is actually going to talk about the mastermind principle, which is something where we've talked about it before a couple of times and even earlier today. No matter what you do, in order to be great, it's going to involve the efforts of other people. It's going to involve the resources, the time, the minds of other people. So get ready to talk about that next week. Again, this has been persistence, 8th step towards riches. My name is Paul H. Flowers Jr. We're doing Act and Grow Rich here, which is a take on Napoleon Hill's Think and Grow Rich. Been an absolute pleasure speaking to you this Wednesday with Wednesday's Words of Wisdom. Again, tune in next week, same time, same channel. Been an absolute pleasure, and bye for now.