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I have a friend named Lori, whose title is now Ph.D., having just finished the long, arduous process of writing and defending her dissertation. Accounts of her journey are described in her archives for March and April. Lori is a prolific, entertaining writer, and visitors to her blog site shared her successes and challenges, her ups and downs. It was no picnic! The “Why am I doing this?” question surfaced several times as she plowed through adversity. Amazing. I am so happy for her! I know how hard it is to do what she did. Her accounts brought back memories of my own all-nighters over 25 years ago. I had my own weird challenges. For one thing, I wrote my dissertation in a forgotten time in human history when there were no PCs, no word processor programs, no Internet, no web, nada. I was a U.S. Army officer, living and working in Germany. Duke had sent me a letter stating that I would receive no more in-absentia extensions and that my work must be completed by December 31, 1977. I had struggled with the dissertation for four years, and now I had just a few months left. My advisor had returned some of the chapters for rewrite four or five times. I wasn’t sure I’d be able to meet the deadline. I wrote at night and on weekends and thought many times, “Why am I doing this?” Lori had the inner strength to keep plugging away in spite of discouragement and fatigue. Others give up along the way, but in the end the winners are those who simply refused to quit. I have always loved to see someone with the heart of a champion in action. I remember the time when Bjorn Borg faced certain defeat against John McEnroe, but kept a tie-breaker going for what seemed like half an hour, then winning that game and the set, then later the match. I have an image in my mind of Sugar Ray Leonard taking a terrible beating from Roberto Duran, then getting up off the mat several times and eventually beating Duran on points. Or the time when Michael Jordan scored 56 points against the Utah Jazz—when he was so sick he could barely stand up after the game—to win one of his six NBA championships. So many times, it just comes down to refusing to quit, no matter what. PERSISTENCE “It’s hard to beat a person who never gives up.” - Babe Ruth, American professional baseball player (1895-1948) "Being defeated is often only a temporary condition. Giving up is what makes it permanent." - Marilyn vos Savant, American author (1946- ) “Success seems to be largely a matter of hanging on after others have let go.” - William Feather, American author (1889-1981) "You've got to say, 'I think that if I keep working at this and want it badly enough I can have it.' It's called perseverance." - Lee Iacocca, American business leader (1924- ) “Our greatest glory is not in never falling, but in rising every time we fall.” - Confucius, Chinese philosopher (B.C.551-479)
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Dennis E. Coates is CEO of Performance Support Systems, author of MindFrames, a brain-based personality assessment system (www.initforlife.com) and co-founder of the Train-to-Ingrain alliance (www.train-to-ingrain.com, info@train-to-ingrain.com, 800-488-6463), which delivers a reinforcement-centered approach to learning and development that achieves permanent, measurable improvements in workplace behavior and positive impacts on business results.
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