![]() He dutifully took pictures of his basement to compare the space as it was before and then after the work had been finished. His mood and outlook brightened at the thought. We set a goal that he would remodel his basement. We engaged an experiment with this idea in mind because he was really committed to changing his behavior at home. ![]() So, it is difficult for him to persist at home. When he comes home, he’s worn out and needs a break. In this case, one notion we wanted to test was the idea that he has persisted in the past, but he’s grown tired of persisting. But, What makes him successful in his career? How has he accomplished what he has in life? He is correct in assuming that for some reason he doesn’t persist. I’m not depressed, or at least I don’t think I am, but I’m not motivated to do anything.” “Is this my personality or is it something I learned?”įair enough. Then I sit on the couch and I’m drinking beer and watching reality TV with her. I come in and say ‘let’s clean this place up,’ and she looks at me like I’m speaking a foreign language. My spouse looks around and doesn’t help, she just cracks open a beer and watches reality TV. My car, which I bought nearly knew a year ago is now filled with coffee cups, papers, mail that hasn’t been opened. At my job, my workspace is messy, never up-to-date and it’s only a matter of time before my boss will fire me for abject neglect. I’m a grown man, my house is in disarray, I’m living down here in my basement that’s still unfinished. “Bob, On that day in School when they taught students the lesson about persistence, I wasn’t there.” I have a client who is a successful person in his own right, but he struggles daily with the feeling that he can’t persist. We would like to think that persistence is learned, but the fact is that there is more to simply concluding that when a person does not persist that they have been taught poor habits. QUESTION #1: Is persistence a character trait or is it a learned behavior? We also tend to punish ourselves when we don’t see a task through to its end. We stereotype people who fail to persist with labels: LAZY, IDLE, INDOLENT, SLUGGISH, LANGOROUS. You would think that the ability to persist (or not) would be easy to spot. In some behavioral job interviews there are questions (or even activities) that attempt to get at whether a person can (or cannot) persist in the presence of a “loose end.” You’ve met people who chronically lack persistence. When you don’t finish the task you need to do something with this emotional “loose end.” Fail to persist and you will not finish the task. The inability to persist is an elemental feature underlying why something does not get done. Lack of persistence is just one explanation. There are numerous reason tasks go unfinished. 2 : the act or fact of continuing to exist longer than usual. Persistence defined is: 1 : the act or fact of stubbornly continuing to do something. “Garages are Filled with Unfinished Business” A job started, but half-way through you stop and never go back to it again. We all have a specific kind of relationship with what I call “loose ends” - “We really need to discuss our relationship,” but then it never happens. To be sure, everyone can relate to the psychological consequence of an unfinished task.
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