The Irish poet William Butler Yeats once wrote a poem describing some of the unfortunate characteristics of the modern world. One of the things Yeats noticed was that malevolent people seem to have the most energy, while good people become discouraged and doubtful of their own abilities.
“The best lack all conviction, while the worst are filled with a passionate intensity”–those are the words Yeats used.
It’s true that we can look around and see all sorts of things happening that we might wish were not happening and people doing things that we might not admire. When we see that taking place, it’s easy to start thinking, “What’s the use? What hope do I really have? Why don’t I give up on all the things I’ve been trying to accomplish and just start taking it easy?”
Even goal-directed people feel that way sometimes. All of us have moments like that. That’s when perseverance gets really, really tough.
What’s the answer? Well, it begins with this question: Who are you working for besides yourself? Who is depending on you? Who will benefit if you persevere and succeed? Who will suffer if you give up and stop trying? Who can you reach out to and help once you’ve achieved your goals?
For many people, the answers to these questions will appear quite readily. If you have a family, your spouse and your children are depending on you. Perhaps even your parents are depending on you now if they’re elderly and require some care. But even if you’re a single person or just starting out in your career, you can think of reasons to persevere and succeed that go beyond your personal needs. Maybe you would like to share some of your financial success with the schools that educated you, with the religious institutions that gave you spiritual guidance, or with a hospital that helped to heal you on some occasion.
This sharing doesn’t have to be limited to money, either. If your work has given you certain skills, you can share your time and your abilities. You can, and you should.
But even this isn’t putting it strongly enough. It isn’t just that you’ll do better if you feel you’re working for others in addition to yourself. You absolutely MUST find reasons outside of yourself to persevere if you want to keep going when the going gets tough.
Hemingway wrote, “A man alone hasn’t got a chance.” This means that you need people to help you in life. It also means that you need people to help. You need people who can become the real reasons for perseverance beyond material possessions or your financial success. “What’s in it for me?” can take you only so far. “What’s in it for somebody besides me?” can take you as far as you need to go.
In the last days of World War II, the American cruiser Indianapolis was sunk by an enemy submarine. This was one of the most tragic incidents of the war for the American forces, and hundreds of men lost their lives. Many who made it through the initial attack had to spend days and nights in the water before rescuers arrived.
The experience of trying to stay alive in the water was so overwhelming that many people simply gave up. In fact, the survivors later reported that virtually everyone wanted to give up at one time or another. But whenever someone wanted to quit trying, the others would talk to that person about the people back home who needed him and who were depending on him to survive. And if there was no one who was depending on him right then, they would talk about people in the future who would someday be needing him, people he hadn’t yet met, people who hadn’t even been born. They conjured up all sorts of reasons above and beyond simply surviving. This motivation beyond merely thinking of the self was often the only motivation that made these men persevere.
And what was true for those men in wartime is also true in all of our lives, no matter what we’re trying to accomplish. We need to look outward for reasons to persevere. Is there a better reason to go on than helping others on the road to your own success? I (Jim Rohn) don’t think so.
* Source: Leading an Inspired Life by Jim Rohn