Determination

Determination is closely associated with resilience: the ability to bounce back from setbacks, rather than giving up. When the going gets tough, the tough get going!

Perseverance and persistence are also highly related. We are more likely to persevere if we think talent is only peripheral to our future achievements. According to Malcolm Gladwell, it requires about 10,000 hours or 10 years of serious practice and sustained effort to get to the top in any sport or other major skill: long persistence of deliberate effort is more important than talent.

The region of the brain responsible for controlling fingers in young musicians grew in direct proportion to the number of years training. Purposeful practice builds new neural connections in your brain, so you can improve aspects of your "intelligence" with practice.

"Those who believed that their performance was transformable through effort, not only persevered but actually improved in the teeth of difficulties, whereas those labouring under the talent myth regressed." Carol Dweck

"Ordinary adults have a strong ability to change with practice, but if you have a fixed mindset and don’t think you can improve your intelligence, you probably won't improve." - Michael Syed

Resilience, the ability to bounce back from setbacks, is a major attribute of determined individuals. "The ability to both respond to and embrace change is at the very heart of resilience." Heather Hiles

Develop persistence

"Develop persistence: don't take no for an answer"
The advice of a creative director at a top London advertising agency.

In his final year at university, he had applied for graduate schemes with all the top advertising agencies but found that no one was interested as he was heading for a lower second class degree. After many rejections, he tried emailing lots of agencies but was devastated when he got no responses. He then decided to phone the agencies but couldn't get past the receptionist.

After this setback, he thought a lot and decided that the only path left open to him was to try to visit the agencies in person. He made a list of all the agencies within a reasonable traveling distance and spent the next week going around them and asking for unpaid work experience. Again the same problem: everywhere he visited the receptionists said that everyone was unavailable or too busy to see him. He was finally on the point of giving up. He decided to give it one final throw of the dice.

He went back to the agency he most admired, arriving first thing in the morning and asked the receptionist if he could talk to one of the managers about the chance of getting some work experience. The receptionist said that this wasn't possible, as he knew she would. So he sat down in the reception area and refused to leave until someone saw him.

Late in the afternoon, the receptionist whom he had got to know quite well during the day and who had taken a liking to him rang one of the partners, explaining the situation and asked her if she could come down for a very brief chat with him. After hearing his story, the partner took pity on him and said she would offer him a week's experience but nothing more.

At 7.30 when the doors opened on Monday he was standing outside and that week he was always the first into the office and the last to leave at night. No task was too menial and he put one hundred percent into everything he was given to do. The partner was so impressed that she offered him a temporary job at the minimum wage.

He never left ....

The value of failure

What is the secret of success?
Right decisions.
How do you make right decisions?
Experience
How do you gain experience?
Wrong decisions
A.P.J. Abdul Kalam (former President of India)

The saying goes that challenges are opportunities, not threats and that failure gives us the chance to learn new ways of doing things.

Theodore Roosevelt said: "The man who never makes a mistake is the man who never does anything." and it's true that often the most powerful way to learn how to do something right is to initially fail: we learn from our mistakes.

"The fear of making a mistake, of risking an error, or of being told you are wrong is constantly with us. And that’s a shame. Making mistakes is not the same thing as being creative, but if you are not willing to make mistakes, then it is impossible to be truly creative. If your state of mind is coming from a place of fear and risk avoidance, then you will always settle for the safe solutions—the solutions already applied many times before.

Failing is fine, necessary in fact. But avoiding experimentation or risk—especially out of fear of what others may think—is something that will gnaw at your gut more than any ephemeral failure. A failure is in the past. It’s done and over. In fact, it doesn’t exist. But worrying about “what might be if…” or “what might have been if I had… ” are pieces of baggage you carry around daily. They’re heavy, and they’ll kill your creative spirit. Take chances and stretch yourself. You’re only here on this planet once, and for a very short time at that. Why not just see how gifted you are?"
Daniel Garr

"If you make the wrong decision, it's never too late to make the right one" - Michael Oher

“If you give people freedom, they will amaze you. Get out of their way and they will do the right thing 99% of the time.They’ll do remarkable things and all you need to do is give them a little infrastructure and a lot of room to change the world. And I think that holds in any industry.”

"At Google, Failure is celebrated. It’s ok to fail, and that is culturally encouraged. We just want people to fail fast so that they don’t get stuck doing the wrong thing for too long because they are afraid to admit that it is not working. So failure is encouraged: obviously, we don’t want people to be constantly failing, but I think it's culturally ok to admit your mistakes, say that didn’t work and move on to the next thing." - Aimee O’Malley

How I became a manager

People who do lots of work...
Make lots of mistakes
People who do less work...
Make less mistakes
People who do no work...
Make no mistakes
People who make no mistakes...
Get promoted!

A positive outlook

Henry Ford said: "If you think you can or you think you can't, you're absolutely right." and the latest research on this has suggested he is correct. Professor Suzanne Segerstrom found that when optimists encounter a setback they are less likely than pessimists to just give up.

Professor Martin Seligman found that people who believed that they could achieve a certain goal did so in 80% of cases whereas people who did not believe they could achieve their goal only achieved it 20% of the time. But a positive attitude requires practise, just as you become unfit if you don't exercise regularly.

We grow the garden of our own reality with thought-seeds. If we wish to grow flowers instead of weeds we must attend to our thoughts.

Should you praise people for effort or intelligence?

Carol Dweck of Columbia University did seminal research on motivation. She divided school children into two groups who were given a test. After the test, half the students were praised for their intelligence and the others for the effort they had put into the test ("You have worked really hard").

The children were then given the choice of doing another harder test or an easier one. The children praised for intelligence chose the easier test, as they didn't want to risk failure as they might look bad if they failed: they avoided challenging situations. The children praised for effort chose the harder test: they weren't interested in success, but in facing a challenge. They wanted to show how hard-working they were. They also worked much longer at the test , enjoyed it more and didn't lose confidence.

Praising intelligence damages motivation and performance and teaches people to pursue easy challenges rather than to learn.

Praise effort, not ability: "You must have worked really hard to get that score". Ask them what parts they enjoyed most and how they dealt with any problems that arose. Focus on effort, concentration, and organisational skills, for example, the ability to train hard and work well with others in a sporting situation. Say "You played well today" rather than "You are good at cricket".

In another study on two groups of children doing homework, one group was promised a medal as a reward and the other group was given nothing. The children given the medal spent less time on the work. The reasoning was that "adults offer rewards when they want me to do something I don't enjoy so I must not like doing it!" Rewards reduced the enjoyment and demotivated them. Instead, praise their effort or give an occasional small surprise reward after completion.

Walt Disney

When Walt Disney first started work, he was dismissed from the Kansas City Star Newspaper because his manager thought he lacked creativity.

He went on to form an animation company called Laugh-O-Gram Films in 1921.Using his natural salesmanship, he raised $15,000 for the company. However, he made a deal with a New York distributor, and when the distributor went out of business, Disney was forced to shut Laugh-O-Gram down. He could barely pay his rent and even ate dog food.

Broke but not defeated, Walt spent his remaining cash on a first class train ticket to Hollywood. In 1926, he created a cartoon character called Oswald the Rabbit. When he attempted to negotiate a better deal with Universal Studios, the cartoon’s distributor, Disney discovered that Universal had secretly patented the Oswald character. Universal then hired most of Disney’s artists and continued the cartoon without Disney’s input (and without paying him).

As if that wasn’t enough, Disney also struggled to release some of his films. He was told Mickey Mouse would fail because the mouse would 'terrify women.' Distributors also rejected 'The Three Little Pigs', saying it needed more characters.

Pinocchio was shut down during production and Disney had to rewrite the entire storyline. Other films, like Bambi, Pollyanna and Fantasia, were misunderstood by audiences at the time of their release.

Disney’s greatest example of perseverance occurred when he tried to make the book Mary Poppins into a film. In 1944, at the suggestion of his daughter, Disney decided to adapt the Pamela Travers novel into a screenplay. However, Travers had absolutely no interest in selling Mary Poppins to Hollywood. To win her over, Disney visited Travers at her England home repeatedly over the following 16 years. Finally, Travers was overcome by Disney’s charm and vision for the film, and gave him permission to bring Mary Poppins to the big screen.

In a fitting twist of fate, The Disney Company went on to purchase ABC in 1996. At the time, ABC owned the Kansas City Star, meaning the newspaper that once sacked Disney had become part of the empire he created.

If Howard Schultz gave up after being turned down by banks 242 times, there would be no Starbucks.

If Walt Disney had given up after his concept for a Theme Park was rejected 302 times, there would be no Disneyland.

If J.K. Rowling had given up after being rejected by 12 publishers, there would be no Harry Potter.

Albert Einstein didn't speak until he was 4 and couldn't read until he was 7.

One thing is certain. If you give up too soon you'll never know what you might have achieved.