Persevere

Congratulations, everyone, and welcome to “Persevere,” an organization dedicated to the knowledge that difficulty leads to growth, if we actively choose to learn from that adversity.

We are open to anyone willing to make the commitment to learn from life’s obstacles. There are no cultural or ideological barriers to joining. This organization supports people who have hit a roadblock in their lives. We offer guidance and support, working together to encourage, motivate, and challenge each other on their journey of growth.

Our mission statement is simple: Failure Absolutely Is Learning. We believe that when an obstacle appears in our path, we have a choice: to allow that obstacle to stop us, or to see it as a learning opportunity, to understand that we can grow from these experiences to create a new life, more interesting than we ever thought possible.

You have made the choice to seek your dreams with diligence and uncompromising determination. You have chosen to accept failure as it occurs—not as a negative, but as a way to pick yourself back up, dust off, and say, “Well, that didn’t work. Let’s try something else.”

The Japanese culture has a fascinating art form called kintsugi, which is both practical and stunning. Broken pottery is repaired with lacquer and powdered metals, usually silver or gold. This type of art can only begin once the piece has been cracked, scarred, or even broken and unusable in its current state. This type of repair job is not designed to hide the cracks, but to embrace them: to make the piece unique and beautiful, because of its imperfections.

So often in our society, we try to hide our scars, repress our mistakes. As members of “Persevere,” we choose to see failure for what it really is: a way to solve a problem creatively when one solution does not work. That choice—to learn from mistakes, and continue living—is what supports and grows this agency.

And just like the broken pottery made better than before, when we have survived a stressful experience, our scars remind us of all that we have accomplished and learned from an experience that seemed insurmountable at the time. We have become more interesting from being damaged. We now have a lesson to share and a story to tell.

Failure is a part of life. We do not waste time expending energy on silly things like perfection or status quo. Nor do we worry about what someone will think of us when we ask for help. Instead, we do what we love, even in the face of obstacles. We strive to “follow [our] bliss,” as researcher Joseph Campbell was quoted saying in the 2011 movie, Finding Joe.

Do what makes hours fly like minutes. We pledge to explore our bliss. We pledge to be our own motivator, challenging ourselves to reach our potential and reconnect with what each of us finds important.

When we at Persevere push to go on, when the struggle is extraordinary, that is the time we will learn the greatest lessons and earn the greatest treasures, whatever they may be.

No failure will stop us from following our bliss. No mistake is too large to learn from. Failure Absolutely Is Learning. Welcome to Persevere, and congratulations on beginning your adventure!

While I did not win the competition, I chose to include the content of my speech, because it hints at what I have long struggled with. Without explicitly stating the word “vulnerability,” I screamed it between each line. If I was going to charter an organization, I wanted something deeply personal, something I needed (and still do need) a lot of practice in, and a way to reframe some of my own insecurities and fallacies. In short, my organization dealt with vulnerability. Before I was inspired to think critically and honestly about vulnerability by reading Brené Brown’s Daring Greatly book, and before I consciously yearned for more vulnerability in my life, I wrote the celebratory speech of Persevere. I wrote about the power that failure has, if framed as a learning experience and not a termination of trying. I found a form of art that exists only because things break. I learned about Joseph Campbell’s Hero’s Journey, the universal path that a hero takes in a story, found in every culture on our planet. I think next to Persevere’s welcoming plaque would be something else Brené Brown wrote, her Manifesto of the Brave and Brokenhearted, on her website.

There is no greater threat to the critics and cynics and fearmongers

Than those of us who are willing to fall

Because we have learned how to rise.

With skinned knees and bruised hearts;

We choose owning our stories of struggle,

Over hiding, over hustling, over pretending.

When we deny our stories, they define us.

When we run from struggle, we are never free.

So we turn toward truth and look it in the eye.

We will not be characters in our stories.

Not villains, not victims, not even heroes.

We are the authors of our lives.

We write our own daring endings.

We craft love from heartbreak,

Compassion from shame,

Grace from disappointment,

Courage from failure.

Showing up is our power.

Story is our way home.

Truth is our song.

We are the brave and brokenhearted.

We are rising strong.

Brown, 2017, Manifesto of the Brave and Brokenhearted

http://brenebrown.com/downloads/