Tony Williamson

"Nothing in the world can take the place of persistence. Talent will not; nothing is more common than unsuccessful individuals with talent. Genius will not; unrewarded genius is almost a proverb. Education will not; the world is full of educated derelicts. Persistence and determination alone are omnipotent."

- Calvin Coolidge

During World War II, England was staring down the barrel of the Nazi gun. She was on the verge of being overrun by the Hitler war machine. Bombs were falling everywhere. People were dying, fires were raging and supplies were dwindling. Only a narrow body of water, the English Channel, stood between England and the ferocious hordes of Nazi Germany.

Sir Winston Churchill, the great wartime Prime Minister of England, was asked to give the main address at an institution of learning. After an illustrious introduction to this amazing leader, Churchill slowly approached the podium and the audience settled down to hear this word wizard, this consummate master of elocution and the English language.

As he steadied his ample frame at the microphone, he surveyed the audience, the students. Churchill then gave the shortest speech of his illustrious career, a searing presentation of only six words. He thundered, "Never give up! Never, never, never!" Then he sat down.

Shortest speech

This six-word speech has gone down in the annals of elocution as one of the greatest speeches ever, because it addressed the inner survival instincts of a battered, beleaguered and bloody Britain. And as they say, the rest is history. Against all odds, England went on, with its allies, to defeat Hitler.

And herein lies a great truth in life. The winner is not necessarily the one who starts with a flourish, but the one who persists to the end. If you should ask me what I have found as a common feature of the lives of the many successful people I have studied, it is persistence. The will to continue, the deep desire to keep striving toward that goal, the ability to pick yourself up, dust yourself off and start all over again. For true success has everything to do with how you rise up from that fall. We all will fall, but not all rise up again.

If you speak with successful men and women in Jamaica today, the Butch Stewarts, the Douglas Oranes, the Audrey Hinchcliffes, the Matalons, the Issas, the Danny Williamses, the Oliver Joneses, the Bev Lopezes, the hundreds of other successful people and captains of industry, you will find one common thread running throughout their careers: They fell and rose again. They faced tremendous obstacles but overcame them. They endured deep disappointments, but they persisted. You see them driving around today in their SUVs and BMWs, and one is tempted to say, 'They were born with a silver spoon in their mouths.' But this is more often than not quite untrue.

They endured hardships, failures, bankruptcies, embarrassment, ridicule and discouragement, but they persisted, and like cream, rose to the top.

The power of persistence

Over the next few weeks I shall be dealing with the power of persistence and hoping by this series to indicate that sometimes the best way to succeed is simply to endure, to persist, to last. You will learn that a winner never quits and a quitter never wins.

Johann von Goethe sums up what I intend to show you in subsequent articles. He said, "There are but two roads that lead to an important goal and to the doing of great things: strength and perseverance. Strength is the lot of but few privileged men; but austere perseverance, harsh and continuous, may be employed by the smallest of us and rarely fails in its purpose, for its silent power grows irresistibly greater with time." Take courage, my friend. Hang in there and outlast your troubles.