Tweet 35 in my career advice book, Success Tweets: 140 Bits of Common Sense Career Success Advice, all in 140 Characters or Less makes a point about persistence and perseverance. “Persistent people keep going; especially in the face of difficulties. Keep at it and you will accomplish your goals.”
Dick Weller is my cousin. He’s a great guy. The other day he sent me this email…
Bud: I’ve never heard of Cliff Young but you might be able to use his story in some of your work…..so here you are….interesting guy at age 61…
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yiEfZc8LhdE
Dick
I clicked on the link and watched Cliff Young’s story. I hope you did too. It’s pretty amazing – and it is a testament to the power of persistence and perseverance. Check it out.
Dick is a pretty good example of perseverance himself. He had a knee replacement several years ago. The new knee bothered him quite a bit, but he just worked harder at rehabbing it. Finally, the pain got so bad, he went to the doctor – where he got some surprising information.
It seems that Dick’s replacement knee was not sized correctly. It was too small. Dick signed up for another surgery to have a second replacement knee. During that surgery, the docs found that there was a lot of infection around his knee. The kept Dick in the hospital for a few days to address the worst of the infection and then sent him home – without a knee – to wait six weeks for another surgery. They needed to wait that long to ensure that the infection was completely cleared up.
So Dick went home without a knee. He’s been spending a lot of time on the internet lately and that’s where he found the Cliff Young video.
Dick is a great example of perseverance in action. He isn’t moping as he sits at home without a knee. He is staying busy and thinking good thoughts.
The next time life starts to get you down, think of Dick – and his six weeks without a knee. Stay positive and focus on what you can do to make the best of the situation. Dick isn’t blaming his original surgeon. He’s moving forward with his life.
I was touched that he took the time to send me a link to the Cliff Young video suggesting that I might find it useful in my career coaching work.
Recently, my web site was hacked and some malware installed. This resulted in my site being blacklisted by Google. It’s taken a couple of months to get the site cleaned up and back and running. During that time, I was pretty upset, I wanted to blame the hackers. Then I realized I was to blame here too. I hadn’t been as vigilant as I could have been when it came to my website security. This problem won’t happen again.
During the whole time that I was struggling to get the site back up, I kept Dick in mind. If he could soldier on with only one knee, a little malware problem wasn’t going to get me down.
That’s the career advice on perseverance and persistence I found in Cliff Young’s and Dick’s stories. What do you think? Please take a minute to share your thoughts with us in a comment. As always, thanks for reading my thoughts on life and career success. I value you and I appreciate you.
It takes perseverance and persistence to climb the corporate ladder. If you want to learn more about how to climb the corporate ladder faster check out the free rebroadcast of a webinar I did recently. You can find it here.
Bud
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