GOAL-MOTIVATED PERSEVERANCE: The Mindset of Winners Who Don’t Quit.

GOAL-MOTIVATED PERSEVERANCE: The Mindset of Winners Who Don’t Quit.

Do you give a second thought to the popular quote “Winners don’t quit and quitters don’t win” whenever you hear it? I do and you should too. From world history, you can see that one trait that is common to every world changer is the fact that they never gave up on what they believed in. They stayed focused on the pursuit of their goals and aspirations even when it became tough and never gave up. This trait is admirable but I must say it doesn’t come cheap. It requires a lot of patience and hard work to develop the skill of Goal motivated Perseverance that is needed to see things through no matter what.

What Is Goal Motivated Perseverance?

Goal-motivated Perseverance is a skill that helps to ensure that one stays on an initiated task with commitment and dedication while shunning any other distraction to bring it to completion even if the task gets very difficult. Starting a task is not enough, one needs to stay on the task and see to its conclusion. Goal-motivated perseverance is one of the life skills that make up executive functioning skills, you can read more about it here

Your 8-year-old goes all excited about learning how to play the piano and you are happy too because you have always wanted her to learn a musical instrument and less than two weeks into the training, she tells you that she can’t go on with the training. Her excuses could range from, “it’s too difficult” to “it’s too boring” or “it’s not my passion” or “all my friends are playing the violin”. You are disappointed because you know that all these excuses are just excuses and are not tenable. It is even more disappointing for you when you identify a pattern with her and realize that she is more of a starter and never a finisher. The nagging question on your mind is “How will she ever succeed at anything in life when she hardly ever sees anything worthwhile through to the end”.

Success in life requires commitment, determination, grit, and most importantly perseverance.

Perseverance is important to your children for the following reasons.

a.       It helps your child set goals (academic, spiritual, health, and life goals) and achieves them

b.      It also helps your child to never stay defeated or discouraged even when he fails and  

 when he encounters a difficult subject/topic or any other project he won’t abandon ship and run off rather he will stay on it until he understands it and gets a hold of it. He won’t take the easy way out but rather will himself through the process and succeed.

c.       It enhances the ability of the child to be successful. This promotes healthy self-esteem and a huge level of self-worth.

 

How to help your child build perseverance

1.       Model it. Let your child know and see that you are not a quitter. Introduce slogans, songs, and mantras like “we finish what we start”, “winners never quit and quitters never win, I keep trying until I succeed, I am an overcomer, I focus on my goal, etc.  And encourage them to personalize it

2.       Share stories and read books of greatly successful people who beat great odds to succeed in their various fields of endeavour. (Dr. Ben Carson, President Nelson Mandela, Malala Yousafzai, Michael Jordan, Tobi Amusan, etc.) You can also have discussions centering on perseverance using nature-based stories or movies

3.       You can ask them to write creative or imaginative stories. In the course of writing the urge to quit writing midway into the exercise will come up, but the ability to continue and finish the story helps them to build perseverance.

4.       Set up a mentorship system and encourage them to be a part of it. This mentor should be older and must be known to possess a high level of the skill (perseverance) you are trying to build in your child.

5.       Always reward their ability to finish tasks and accomplish goals. These rewards could be verbal praise and recommendation, gifts, treats, or even monetary rewards. Just use your discretion. Past rewards will help to motivate future task completion. Never fail to remind them of past successes

6.       Engage them in a lot of physical exercises.

7.       Introduce games like;

a.       Egg on a spoon race. (In this game, children run a race while holding an egg with a spoon. If the egg falls they are to pick it up and return to the start line to start all over again. The first child to get to the finish line with his egg still intact is the winner)

b.      Cup stacking game. (In this game, the children are asked to stack a set of cups one on another. If the cups fall, they are to start all over again)

c.       Tug of war game. (In this game, children are divided into two teams and each team lines up behind the team leader. The leader of each team holds on to one end of a rope while the members of the teams form a human chain behind their team leader pulling him to themselves while he pulls the rope to himself. The first team to pull the other team over to their side wins the game.)

d.      Jigsaw puzzles. ( Difficulty level should be age appropriate)

8.       Avoid condemning their mistakes and failures use it as a teaching/learning tool. Help them identify the reasons why they failed in the first place and also let them know that failing doesn’t mean that they are failures.

9.       Never compare them with someone else who is doing better, and encourage them also to desist from negative self-talk like “I can’t, I am not good/smart enough to accomplish this, and this is too difficult for me”. Encourage them to develop positive affirmations about themselves.

10.   Focus more on their process rather than on their results. If for instance a child runs a race and fell along the way and got up again and continued running and then finished 3rd place. Rather than talk about how he would have taken the first position if he had not fallen, praise him heavily for not staying down when he fell, for persevering and continuing with the race.

11.   Also encourage them to put all the other executive functioning skills into practice as it will increase their chances of success, and remember that success is a great motivator.

In our world today, we have a lot of would-have-been inventors who end up as mediocre, we have a lot of dreams and aspirations that ended up as mere wishes, all because the human vessels that were supposed to birth those dreams didn’t stay on the dream long enough to bring them to light. At the very slight instance of discomfort or inconvenience they give up and jump ship. They forget that nothing worth having comes easy.

At a time like this more than ever, we need our children to develop the goal-oriented perseverance which empowers and enables them to stay focused on a task or goal and push for its actualization even when it gets tough. As it has been proven, these skills can be learned, if only parents get intentional enough and do the work.

Did you gain value, I’ll love for you to drop a comment, suggestion, or question and I will be happy to respond. Don’t forget to read our post on executive functioning skills, to know more about the other skills that are embedded in executive functioning.