Here’s an interesting quote from William Walker Atkinson:
“If you concentrate on one thing this minute, and another thing the next moment, and so on, flitting from one flower to another like the butterfly, you will accomplish very little. What is needed is a steady, determined, persistent application to the one object upon which you have set your mind. Having found the object of your desire and knowing how to concentrate upon it, you should then learn how to be Persistent in your concentration, aim, and purpose.
There is nothing like sticking to a thing. Many men are brilliant, resourceful, and industrious, but they fail to reach the goal by reason of their lack of “stick-to-it-iveness.” One should acquire the tenacity of the bulldog, and refuse to be shaken off of a thing once he has fixed his attention and desire upon it.
You remember the old Western hunter who when once he had gazed upon an animal and said “You’re my meat,” would never leave the trail or pursuit of that animal if he had to track it for weeks, losing his meat in the meantime. Such a man would in time acquire such a faculty of Persistence that the animals would feel like Davy Crockett’s coon who cried out, “Don’t shoot, mister, I’ll come down without it.”
You know the dogged persistence inherent in some men that strikes us as an irresistible force when we meet them and come into conflict with their persistent determination. We are apt to call this the “Will,” but it is our old friend Persistence—that faculty of holding the Will firmly up against objects, just as the workman holds the chisel against the object on the wheel, never taking off the pressure of the tool until the desired result is obtained.
No matter how strong a Will a man may have, if he has not learned the art of persistent application of it he fails to obtain the best results. One must learn to acquire that constant, unvarying, unrelenting application to the object of his Desire that will enable him to hold his Will firmly against the object until it is shaped according to his wishes. Not only to-day and to-morrow, but every day until the end.
Buxton has said: “The longer I live, the more certain I am that the great difference between men, between the feeble and the powerful, the great and the insignificant, is Energy—Invincible Determination—a purpose once fixed, and then Death or Victory. That quality will do anything that can be done in this world—and no talents, no circumstances, no opportunities, will make a two-legged creature a man without it.”
Donald G. Mitchell said: “Resolve is what makes a man manifest; not puny resolve; not crude determinations; not errant purpose—but that strong and indefatigable Will which treads down difficulties and danger, as a boy treads down the heaving frost-lands of winter, which kindles his eye and brain with a proud pulse-beat toward the unattainable. Will makes men giants.”
Persistence that Atkinson is talking about is one of the attributes of the Will.
You can train it with the course:
>>> Will Mastery
