Perseverance is Not A Long Race – Walter Elliot

Perseverance is not a long race: In this article, we talk about the meaning of perseverance, how to use it to achieve our dreams. Perseverance is not the same as hard work or blindly doing the same things, it is about listening to feedback and changing your approach to succeed. While talking about this, I’d also like to present the hard work and perseverance conversation to top it off with some inspiring perseverance quotes for students.

Topics covered in this article are:

  1. Meaning of perseverance
  2. Difference in hard work, smart work and perseverance
  3. Perseverance quotes for students

Perseverance Meaning

Before analysing this lovely quote by Walter Elliot about perseverance, it is important to understand the meaning of perseverance. Some of the common definitions of perseverance include:

Persistence in doing something despite difficulty or delay in achieving success: The key points here are doing things despite difficultly. While considering a large goal or dream, we need to think about how to keep our motivation alive amidst failures. As we know – success and failure are two sides of the same coin and invariably you’ll face failure. Perseverance is a way of ensuring that you fight amidst these failures to reach your success.

Perseverance is also synonymous with determination, endurance and grit. I’d like to combine these perseverance meanings into a single point because they all tell us to do the same thing. Focus on the large goal – why you want to do something and do small things to achieve it. This is precisely where Walter Elliot’s quote is most valuable because it tells you very clearly – perseverance is not a long race. It might be a large goal, but built upon small successes to achieve this large goal. It is clearly a reference to – success is a journey and not just a destination in our lives.

To persist in a state, enterprise, or undertaking in spite of counterinfluences, opposition, or discouragement: This will be my last exploration of perseverance meaning because it talks about opposition to your beliefs. Success is not always an imperative, we will face challenges in our journey. These oppositions are valuable in telling us that something is wrong. But they don’t tell us that you are bound to fail. We must make sure that we’re able to listen to this feedback to define a strategy for our success. (Related: Perseverance meaning from Brittanica)

Perseverance is not a long race – it is many short ones

I like this quote because it covers all the perseverance meaning we’ve been talking about. Most quotes talk to us about persevering to succeed. But not many tell us about facing failures in life. These failures are very important to help us understand the opposition. The only way to succeed is to win over these failures and find a way to motivate ourselves.

Walter elliott perseverance, perseverance is not a long run, perseverance quote
Perseverance is not a long race, it is many short races one after the other – Walter Elliott

And we need success to motivate ourselves. If you haven’t already broken down your dream into small, achievable aspects, please start. That is the first step towards making sure that you can enjoy the process. You cannot wait for one single outcome to change your life altogether. You don’t want to come to a place where you feel that you’ve given your all and succeed only to feel – Is this all?

Perseverance is not a long race and your success also is the same. It is small successes that you find a way to rejoice and reinforce so that you live along with the process. There is no point in achieving your dreams by sacrificing your personality or the spirit which makes you happy. If at any point your life is being led that way, please be careful because you’re easily heading into a nosedive.

Hard work and Perseverance

I’d like to talk about perseverance as not a long race in the context of hard work and perseverance. Most often these two are used interchangeably. Hard work only shows a determination for a cause and your commitment towards it. But hard work alone will not give you results.

And perseverance is wrong if you’re not changing your approach through the process. If your hard work and perseverance are not supported by a change in strategy, then you’re clearly wasting your time. You can’t imagine that you’ll be lucky and somehow things work in your favour.

Your hard work and perseverance must be supported by learnings from your failures. Make sure that your perseverance isn’t just about doing the same thing over and over. You must keep asking yourself – what is different, how can I add value this time around? These subtle changes and constant improvement questions go a long way in helping you get closer to your goals. (Related: Difference between hard work and smart work)

Perseverance Quotes for Students

In this post, I’d like to highlight a few popular perseverance quotes for students. Although I’ve said these are perseverance quotes for students, they easily apply to us in different journeys.

There are two ways you can approach quotes on perseverance for students. As a student, your approach can be about gaining knowledge to become better. This is a continuous, long process to which perseverance suits very well. The other approach is result based where you’re focussed on outcome. This however is a short term approach and it is likely to encourage some shortcuts. As a student, our primary allegiance is towards knowledge and becoming better. Everything else, perhaps sometimes even the result is a bonus!

It does not matter how slowly you go as long as you don’t stop – Confucius (Source)

Going on one more round when you don’t think you can, that’s what makes all the difference – Sylvester Stallone (Source)

Success is not final and failure is not fatal, it is the courage that counts – Winston Churchill (Source)

If you can’t fly then run, if you can’t run then walk, if you can’t walk then crawl, but whatever you do you have to keep moving forward – Martin Luther King Jr (Source)

Perseverance is not a long race, it is many short races one after the other – Walter Elliott

Quotes on Perseverance

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