Let’s face it. No single factor is going to be the only factor around which success evolves.

In fact, we can spend all day simply debating the meaning of “success”, and each person’s individual view or definition will have some bearing on what the factors are which help someone to achieve it.

However, I have been around for over half a century, and have seen a lot of “success” and have been lucky enough to experience it myself. I have also read what others have to say on the subject, and one factor seems to constantly be noted in the lives of those who have achieved what most of us would call “success”.

The factor which seems to appear most often is perseverance.

You know, when we start off in most things in life, we don’t really know what we are doing, and we often don’t even know where we are going. Therefore, it’s no surprise that we all tend to have the periods when we don’t seem to be getting anywhere.

Even those who get lucky and who seem to get “the breaks” often wind up wondering where to go and what to do next.

Whether we strike out, or hit some home runs before we go into a slump, once we get convinced that this path is not going to take us where we want to go, it’s hard to stay on the path we originally chose. And, it’s bad enough that there are so many choices and decisions even when things are going right, but, when things go wrong, it becomes even more difficult to sort out the right way to go.

Sometimes, it is necessary to leave the original path to reach our goal, or to change the goal itself, but often even making the right decision means starting over, and, to keep the analogy of the path, we have to pull out the machetes and start clearing a new path!

However, it has been said that if you don’t know where you are going you will get there soon enough, and any road will take you there. Just as in any trip, to reach the ultimate destination which really matters to us will require us to keep traveling and stay on the path that will take us there.

Time after time we hear about those who have given up too soon, and about those who “stuck with it” and eventually reached their goal. While luck and circumstance play a large measure in almost all cases of success, sticking with it is what gets the person to the finish line.