How DO you do perseverance?

A client asked me recently.

We know what perseverance means - the continuation of an opinion or course of action in spite of difficulty or opposition.

But how do we actually do it? And why?

Have you noticed yourself not being able to persevere with an action or task you don’t enjoy? That you tend to find ‘other important’ things to do? To procrastinate perhaps? And that you can persevere when you enjoy the action or task? Or see value in the bigger goal?

And that is the crux - seeing value in the outcome. For yourself.

So the end game is really the beginning, isn’t it?

To persevere or ‘do perseverance’ like my client said, you want to find purpose, live your dreams and realise aspirations and set new goals in the objectives you set yourself.

Without that bigger goal, the individual tasks are just burdensome, right? Because they don’t amount to anything.

So, back to my client’s question and how I DO perseverance.

I identify my endgame and if you have been following me for a while, you know that I am long distance hiker and rock climber. For my 820 km hike through across the Australian Alps, more details here, the endgame was to successfully complete the hike, unassisted, without getting lost or hurt - and to enjoy it. Months were spend on planning, sourcing the right equipment (for us), training (not always fun), navigation and route planning (I outsourced that to my husband) food and nutrition (got to love excel during this time). We spend 4 full weekends weighing and repackaging our food - tedious at best. And yet, each day, each step brought us closer to our dream - to walk the Australian Alps without outside assistance and without entering a township.

During the hike, I pushed personal boundaries, had incredible highs as well as a few melt-downs. And that is when I learned that I am not doing this for anybody else but myself. My purpose, my aspirations, my dreams - otherwise I can’t persevere in spite of the difficulties.

That is how I DO perseverance - finding a goal, a dream that is bigger then the components that make it up.

How do YOU DO perseverance?