Persistence

I had an interesting experience last week. I played tennis with my good friend. We really love to play each other as we are of similar strength and both very competitive - and, of course, good friends. Therefore, we, typically, end up with long exciting ball exchanges and get a good workout.

After 2 hours we were about to finish the second set. Since he won the first set, I was fighting hard to win the second set. But my legs were cramping up. This is quite painful. I could hardly run anymore. I thought of giving up twice, but somehow pushed myself to play on. As I was preparing for my next serve, I looked across and saw my friend displaying a very dejected body language and he told me: “You can have it. I give up.” And stumbled to the bench. I was first a bit worried about him, but it turned out to be sheer exhaustion. He was okay after 15 minutes rest, though, not ready to resume the game.

I thought to myself, if he would have gone on for another 3 minutes I surely would have to give up because of leg cramps.

That tells me something:
- All things even, persistence will win, or
- You don’t have to be twice as good as your competitor to win, just a little bit better is good enough.

Persistence will certainly also work well for us in the daily life
- When negotiating
- Putting in the extra effort to learn something
- Standing up one more time after being knocked down (literally)
- Putting in the extra effort to achieve something

- Try one more time, after having failed

I just started reading a Nelson Mandela’s book ‘Conversations with myself’. In the preface of this book it is said ‘Never forget that a saint is a sinner who keeps on trying.’ This is also about persistence isn’t it?