Great leaders – great achievers – are rarely realistic by other people’s standards. Somehow, these successful people, often considered strange, pick their way through life ignoring or not hearing negative expectations and emotions. Consequently, they accomplish one great thing after another, never having heard what cannot be done. This is precisely why one should never tell a young person that something cannot be done. God may have waiting centuries for someone ignorant enough of the impossible to do that very thing!
Your success with the other six Decisions (RESPONSIBLE, GUIDED, ACTIVE, CERTAIN, JOYFUL, COMPASSIONATE) rests on your ability and willingness to embrace and master the Persistent Decision. To persist without exception means to ultimately ensure success in your endeavors.
The following is verbatim from Andrew’s 2008 book The Seven Decisions: Understanding the Keys to Success, page 146-148.
I WILL PERSIST WITHOUT EXCEPTION
“Knowing that I have already made changes in my life that will last forever, today I insert the final piece of the puzzle. I possess the greatest power ever bestowed upon mankind, the power of choice. Today, I choose to persist without exception. No longer will I live a dimension of distraction, my focus blown hither and yon like a leaf on a blustery day. I know the outcome I desire. I hold fast to my dreams. I stay the course. I do not quit.
I will persist without exception. I will continue despite exhaustion.
I acknowledge the fact that most people quit when exhaustion sets in. I am stronger than most people. Average people accept exhaustion as a matter of course. I do not. Average people compare themselves with other people. That is why they are average. I compare myself to my potential. I am not average. I see exhaustion as a precursor to victory.
How long must a child try to walk before he actually does so? Do I not have more strength than a child? More understanding? More desire? How long must I work to succeed before I actually do so? A child would never ask the question, for the answer does not matter. By persisting without exception, my outcome – my success is assured.
I will persist without exception. I focus on results. To achieve the results I desire, it is not even necessary that I enjoy the process. It is only important that I continue the process with my eyes on the outcome. An athlete does not enjoy the pain of training; an athlete enjoys the results of having trained. A young falcon is pushed from the nest, afraid and tumbling from the cliff. The pain of learning to fly cannot be an enjoyable experience, but the anguish of learning to fly is quickly forgotten as the falcon soars to the heavens.
A sailor who fearfully watches stormy seas lash his vessel will always steer an unproductive course. But a wise and experienced captain keeps his eye firmly fixed upon the lighthouse. He knows that by guiding his ship directly to a specific point, the time spent in discomfort is lessened. And by keeping his eye on the light, there never exists one second of discouragement. My light, my harbor, my future is within sight.
I will persist without exception. I am a person of great faith.
In Jeremiah my Creator declares, “For I know the plans I have for you … plans to prosper you and not to harm you, plans to give you hope and a future.” (29:11 NIV). From this day forward, I will claim a faith in the certainty of my future. Too much of my life has been spent in doubting my beliefs and believing my doubts. No more! I have faith in my future. I do not look left or right. I can only persist.
For me, faith will always be a sounder guide than reason because reason can only go so far – faith has no limits. I will expect miracles in my life because faith produces them every day. I will believe in the future that I do not see. That is faith. And the reward of this faith is to see the future that I believed.
I will continue despite exhaustion. I focus on results. I am a person of great faith. I will persist without exception.”
The following is verbatim from Andrew’s 2008 book The Seven Decisions page 151-153. The letter below also reminds me of Paul Harvey “and here’s the rest of the story for these two unnamed Football Hall of Famers.” Enjoy! merlin
I, Andy Andrews, have a friend with whom I have lunch occasionally. He’s a little older than I am, but he played football as a kid too. He was better than I was, and his dream was to play professional ball. He was a quarterback through high school, and he even got a scholarship to play college ball.
But his dream of playing in the NFL, did not look promising when he injured his back and didn’t play in his senior year. By the last round of the NFL draft, the anxiety and disappointment were just crushing. Finally, the phone rang. One team had made him their choice in the final round .. and at that time the NFL drafted 17 rounds!
He was so happy; he would have signed for practically nothing. And, in fact, he did – $6500. Of course making the team was going to be the toughest challenge. He was competing against four other quarterbacks, but he wanted this more than anything in the world.
He spent the weeks before his first training camp getting into shape and refining his passing skills. He threw thousands of balls through an old tire hung from an A-frame at his in-law’s house. And although his friends and family were proud of him, they didn’t really expect him to make the team.
In July, when he reported to camp, he was ready but scared to death. It was obvious the coaches really didn’t expect him to make the team. When the jerseys were given out for the first photo session, they didn’t even give him a quarterback’s number. (In fact if you get a rookie card of this guy, it shows him wearing number 42.)
Training camp was tough, and the competition was fierce, but his early preparation paid off. His confidence helped him perform well in scrimmages and preseason games until, with the final reduction of the squad, he was given a new jersey – number 15. He’d made the team!
Over the next three years, he sat on the bench and watched the team struggle through three of the most dismal years in the history of the franchise. They went through two coaching staffs; morale was horrible.
In his fourth year, in a bold move, the team hired a little known assistant coach to be the head coach of the team. Nobody had ever heard of this guy. It turned out this new coach had traveled a similar path as my friend. He had come up through the ranks. He had never been a good player, but he loved the game so much he wanted to coach.
Some people thought this new leader was too volatile for the coaching profession. Many people said he couldn’t relate to the players because he was wound too tight. He was given the opportunity to coach fairly late in his life, and then only because the team was so bad. My friend recalls, “If I thought it was tough to make the team, proving myself to this coach was even tougher.”
My friend was a quiet guy, and the coach wasn’t impressed with him. But he was impressed with work habits, his stability, his confidence, and his ability to persist without exception. The coach saw a little of himself in my friend – not the greatest natural talent, but he had an innate inability to back down or quit.
In my friend’s fourth year, the starting quarterback went down with an injury. My friend was ready. This was what he had worked so hard for! He went into the game and brought the team back from behind. After that game, Bart Starr became the running back for the Green Bay Packers.
Vince Lombardi, that little known coach, and Bart Starr led the Packers to one of the greatest all-time records in the history of the NFL. At one point they won five championships in seven years, including the first two Super Bowls, and Bart was named Most Valuable Player in each of those games. Bart was named the Player of the Decade in 1970, and has also been inducted, along with Vince Lombardi, into the Professional Football Hall of Fame.
Today Bart lives in Birmingham with his wife Cherry, and his children and his children’s children. He’s been just as successful in business and his personal life as he ever was on the football field. Bart will tell you that a large degree of success has come developing the habit of persistence without exception.
FAITH OR FEAR?
So what is the difference in people? When faced with struggles, why is it one person quits and another keeps going?
As Gabriel asks in the Traveler’s Gift, “Does faith guide your everyday actions and emotions? Or does fear guide what you do?”
One or the other drives us, and both emotions are an expectation for an event that hasn’t come to pass, or a belief in something that can’t be seen or touched. To have faith is to believe in the hopeful potential of what one has not seen, and the reward of faith is to have the potential manifest. The emotional energy of faith is uplifting. Fear, in contrast, is also to believe in the dark potential of what one has not seen, and the only reward of fear .. is more fear. The emotional energy of fear is life draining. Fear can be used as a catalyst for action, or by default, it imprisons a person in a life of mediocrity.
A man of faith reaps perpetual reward, and a man of fear lives on the edge of insanity. Fear is a vapor – a myth – and if you think fear is some kind of warning from above to keep you out of trouble, you can forget that. There is no instance in the Bible that says fear is from God. Fear disrupts you and keeps you from your goals, dreams, and destiny. Fear and worry are interest paid in advance on something that may never come to pass.
Through the years, I’ve discovered that it’s often the smartest people who are most susceptible to fear in the first place. I couldn’t figure this out until I finally realized that fear is imagination run amok. What you fear doesn’t even exist – it is the misuse of the creative imagination God has placed in you. And in the lives of these creative, intelligent people, somehow fear jumps into the mix and shuts down any possibility of moving toward their goals and dreams. It stops everything. The word worry is derived from an Anglo-Saxon term meaning “to strangle” or “to choke off.” Worry and fear choke off any creative flow or intelligent movement that people might have otherwise had.
Ignore fear. Cast it out of your life. There is no reward for fear. The reward is in faith and in seeing what you have believed come to pass.
“I will persist without exception. I am a person of great faith.”
Ralph Waldo Emerson said, “Always do what you’re afraid to do.”