Karl Edwards presents Working Matters

Tag: perseverance

  • Quote to Consider: Your Will or Your Won’t?

    quote-to-consider“The difference between perseverance and obstinacy is that one often comes from a strong will, and the other from a strong won’t.”

    Henry Ward Beecher

  • Thought Leaders Unpacked -> The Soul of a Leader #8: Persevering to the End

    thought-leadersWhen consistently engaging in practices of human wholeness and integrity something “subtle” takes place. Transformation.

    This has been my favorite and most challenging chapter of this book. I am still wrestling with the notion that the “dark night of the soul” has an impact on one’s business life as well as one’s spirituality.

    Of course, you say. Of course, I say!

    A big mistake of modernity has been to compartmentalize spirituality away from other categories of work, life and relationships.

    Of course one’s journey of personal maturity includes and impacts all areas of life. Even work. Especially work.

    Benefiel courageously takes on perseverance in light of those tumultuous, disorienting seasons of life when the assumptions that have guided us to date collide with a deeper, richer, larger reality.

    A medieval scholar, St. John of the Cross, is most famous for observing and describing how the spiritual journey includes seasons of such enormous disorientation that all ways seem dark, lonely, and impassable.

    But we live busy lives of work, family, community involvement, political activism, etc. How do we accommodate an extended season of difficult (more…)

  • Keeping It Real: Attending to Details

    I am not a detail person. Fact.

    Sometimes, though, I need to attend to details. Patiently and painstakingly work my way through every last jot and tittle. Systematically, thoroughly, exhaustively, completely, accurately, timely… you get the idea.

    I’m exhausted just thinking about it.

    Details, for us concept-people, represent a challenge of focus, discipline and perseverance.

    Focus. The sort of attentiveness required to spot and recognize necessary distinctions among the blur and whirl of facts, events and personalities is a capacity we can only dream of. (And we usually call those dreams, “nightmares.”)

    It’s like that children’s game, “Which of these pictures is different than the rest?” Detail-oriented people spot the distinction instantly, while the rest of us look and look and look. Not until we compare each and every feature of each drawing do we discover the difference.

    Discipline. The sort of patience required to look at something from every imaginable angle, follow through on every clue, look under every stone, is both a skill and a character quality that takes years for the uninitiated of us to develop.

    Like a chess game where one is thinking about all the possible future moves. (more…)

  • Quote to Consider: Turning Obstacles Into Propellers

    quote-to-consider“He is the best sailor who can steer within fewest points of the wind, and exact a motive power out of the greatest obstacles.”

    Henry David Thoreau

  • Quote to Consider: Believing in Oneself

    quote-to-consider“Whatever course you decide upon, there is always someone to tell you that you are wrong. There are always difficulties arising which tempt you to believe that your critics are right. To map out a course of action and follow it to an end requires… courage.”

    Ralph Waldo Emerson

  • Dreaming of Perseverance

    Keep on keeping on.

    Both a frame of mind and the next decision.

    A blend of courage, hope and love for which there is no recipe.

    A life skill developed one obstacle at a time.

    – Karl Edwards

  • Two Keys to Perseverance

    Perseverance is not always a matter of mustering sheer will power.

    While determination on our part is crucial, we come up against obstacles, opposition, and constraints that hold us back, sabotage our efforts and attack our spirit. What once felt like an indomitable fount of energy, creativity and genius slowly crumbles beneath us even as we scramble for higher ground.

    I‘ve been learning that perseverance requires tactical preparedness, as well as inner strengthening.

    More than sheer commitment to our own project or dream, we need to be aware and savvy about the people and forces that work against us. We have to including contingencies in our planning to account for opposition, and initiatives to head off anything we can anticipate in the way of trouble.

    There is no room for naive idealism. To deny the reality of difficulties is to participate in one’s own defeat.

    We also need an inexhaustible spirit and strength of character. Such inner resources don’t appear from nowhere. Two lifelong tasks to this end are: 1.) digging a deep well of resources that restore, refresh and renew you, and 2.) learning to draw on those resources when needed.

    Which is your stronger suit when mustering the determination to push forward in spite of all that would hold you back? Do you lean on your sound planning or your inner tenacity? What might we learn from your success in persevering?