PERSEVERE PT. II

“Perseverance Empowers Personal Growth”

As stated last week, Perseverance can best be described as “Finishing what you start; continuing in a course of action despite obstacles; getting it out the door; or taking pleasure in completing tasks.”

Perseverance is also closely related to a range of other concepts including resilience, motivation, drive, determination, grit, passion, and conscientiousness. To simply put it, its people who refuse to give up on achieving specific goals and approach challenges with a positive outlook.

Even during times when life feels like a stroll through the park, people regularly find themselves battling against gusts and gales on our way to reaching our goals. You want health? Push through the pain on the treadmill. You want academic success? Power through the laborious articles. You want dental hygiene? Breathe through the deafening drilling noises this close to your brain. You want harmonious relationships? Sweat through uncomfortable conversations with colleagues.

All that practice has made us rather skilled at finding ways to overcome ourselves and persevere at things that are aversive and unpleasant, and yet necessary for achieving our objectives. It is about "Doing Despite Disliking." So then, what can people do in these instances of self-control conflicts to help them persist at everyday tasks.

There are in fact, a great variety of strategies that people have in their arsenals to help them get through what they are doing. Most of these creative strategies are a variety of regulatory processes such as changing the situation, focusing on something else, reappraising the task in a different way, or using sheer willpower. Perhaps one of the best passages of scripture that helps to define this, I think, is in 2 Peter 1:5-8, "For this very reason, make every effort to add to your faith goodness; and to goodness, knowledge; and to knowledge, self-control; and to self-control, perseverance; and to perseverance, godliness; and to godliness, mutual affection; and to mutual affection, love. For if you possess these qualities in increasing measure, they will keep you from being ineffective and unproductive in your knowledge of our Lord Jesus Christ."

The word translated as perseverance, is the Hebrew word chozek [חוֹזֶק], which comes from the root word chazaq [חָזַק]. Now this term has to do with strength, someone powerful, or more precisely to grow firm or strong. What's intriguing here is Peter's very distinct connections from knowledge to self-control to perseverance to godliness; then godliness to mutual affection, and finally to love. The main point that Peter is making here is that it is a choice you and I must make.

It begins with having knowledge. You cannot expect to have self-control without knowledge. You will not persevere without knowledge, demonstrate mutual affection, nor experience love without knowledge. However, with knowledge one can achieve these things to include godliness - or - chasidus [חסיד], which comes from Chassid.

Chassid simply means piety or one who is pious. It is a person who fulfills his or her duties toward God and others “beyond the line of the law”—beyond what is commanded and obligatory. It is someone who is selfless, alive, or living an empowered life. Now we see the connection that Peter is making here. What is most important, beyond knowledge, is that of perseverance.

If a person does not choose to persevere they will not reach such goals, nor experience such an empowering lifestyle. Today, I want to share with you 4 Successful Self-Regulatory Strategies that I believe will help you to persevere:

1. Focus on the positive consequences of the activity.

This strategy can be applied in a variety of situations. For example, if you find yourself on a treadmill—exasperated and ready to give up—you could remind yourself of the good that you are doing to your physical and emotional wellbeing. Or if you are a student laboring over tedious reading material, you could think that studying now will likely help you pass your exams and achieve your academic goals.

2. Regulate your emotions.

There are many ways that people can regulate their emotional states to keep themselves in a good mood—even despite being in the middle of an otherwise unenjoyable task. For example, thinking of something that makes you happy—whether a memory of a sunny beach or your pet’s joyful greeting when you come home. Regulating your emotions can be conceptually different from distraction, because distraction doesn’t necessarily have the component of changing your mood for the better. When you think of your grocery list and dinner plans while you are pushing through on the treadmill, you may have successfully distracted yourself from the here and now of your circumstances, but not necessarily made yourself happier with your thoughts.

3. Monitor your goal progress.

This strategy involves checking in with yourself and your progress in order to see how well you are doing on your task and how close you are to your goal. For example, if you are on a treadmill, you can monitor your progress by looking at the amount of time or distance that you have already put in. We do this mental evaluation of where we are compared with where we want to be often and naturally. It can be a successful self-regulatory strategy to help you persevere at your tasks.

4. Think of the near finish.

When you are getting close to completing your goal but feel the strain and effort of continuing, thinking of the near finish might be another helpful strategy for reaching your goal. For example, if you had planned on running for 30 minutes, and you feel like you are about to give up after 25 minutes, thinking that you are nearly there can give you the extra boost of self-control you need to push through the last 5 minutes.

If you have ever relied on music or podcasts to get you through cleaning your kitchen, then you must have used what I call "task enrichment" strategy. Surprisingly, however, this widely-used strategy—adding something positive to the task to make it more pleasant—doesn't necessarily have any effect on self-regulatory success. While task enrichment might indeed help you persist at your task, it might become a negative distraction if the task itself is only meaningful if you are able to focus on it.

For example, if you are trying to understand or memorize material that you are reading, then having the TV in the background would likely not be helpful in getting the most out of your reading. This is because it will either add to your cognitive load or distract you from focusing on what you are doing. Therefore, task enrichment is a strategy that can be useful in situations where the cognitive load (how much is on your mind) of your task is relatively low and the effort is more physical than mental. Like doing house chores or running on a treadmill.

While there are many other strategies that may be helpful—depending on your personality, the task that you are trying to undertake, your goals and motivations—here are some important insights into the underlying psychological mechanisms of these self-control strategies that help us persist at everyday aversive tasks:

“On one hand, what gets people to want to finish their goals is their ability to look into the future, to transcend the here and now, and to anticipate what is going to happen depending on your own behavior. These strategies are a means of making sure that you can anticipate the positive consequences that you imagined for your future and to avoid the negative ones. On another hand, these strategies can make the difficult task that you are doing less effortful. In other words, they change the experience of the here and now and make it easier for you to arrive at the future you are trying to accomplish.”

So then, to connect Peter teaching with these strategies, we must begin with acquiring knowledge. However, this may be a task that is not all that pleasant for you. If you apply these self-regulatory strategies, it will greatly help you to not only acquire that knowledge you seek, but it will greatly empower you to stick to it. By persevering will you begin to move forward in acquiring godliness; and to godliness, mutual affection; and to mutual affection, love. For if you possess these qualities in increasing measure, they will keep you from being ineffective and unproductive in your knowledge of our Lord Jesus Christ.

When you become mindful of your own perseverance and self-mastery, will you truly begin to live an Empowered Life.

Join me next week as I talk about the Perseverance of Christ in a world that did everything to try and stop his life mission.

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