Psychologist Angela Duckworth presented an interesting question in her book, ‘Grit’. She asked: ‘How many of us start something new, full of excitement and good intentions, and then give up- permanently- when we encounter the first real obstacle, the first long plateau in progress?’

The answer? Far too many of us.

The truth is that once the fuel of motivation that propels people to work towards their goals runs out or they begin to encounter difficulties and failures, most typical people just stop pressing towards their goals and dreams. The atypical ones are those that press on despite a distinct lack of external reward for the efforts that they are putting in and despite struggles, challenges and failures.

And I have often asked myself why. Why do people give up on goals and dreams and targets? Why do so many people begin projects that they never complete? And what is it that marks out the people who persist in their goals and dreams despite obstacles, difficulties and failures?

Well, I think I have found a good answer to the last question. That distinct marker that differentiates between the quitters and the persistent go-getters is a single quality.

Doggedness.

UNDERSTANDING DOGGEDNESS

Doggedness: (noun) marked by stubborn determination.

Synonyms: perseverance, persistence, single-mindedness, tenacity, determination, indefatigability, staying power

Essentially, doggedness is marked by the ability to persist even in the face of difficulties. It is being willing to “give it a go” even when the outcome and the way to proceed are uncertain. It is the acceptance that success does not come easy and not being frightened of finding things difficult. It is having a high level of “stickability”, and being able to readily recover from frustration. It is the ability to “hang in” with your goals and dreams even though you may, for a while, feel somewhat confused or even anxious. It is the ability to dust yourself and try again even after falling.

Simply put, doggedness is not quitting even when giving up seems to be the only reasonable step others might take. It means not losing focus when failures nibble at your determination and begin to sway the conviction of your vision. It is, tapping from the words of George Bernard Shaw, the willingness and ability to be a force of fortune instead of a feverish, selfish little clod of ailments and grievances complaining that the world will not devote itself to making you happy.

WHY BE ONE OF THE DOGGED?

Malcolm Gladwell in his book, ‘Outliers: The Story of Success’, stated that success is a function of persistence and doggedness and the willingness to work hard for twenty-two minutes to make sense of something that most people would give up on after thirty seconds.

There are numerous people who exemplify the truth of Gladwell’s words. We have the famous Abraham Lincoln, who seemed to be the epitome of political failure before emerging the renowned president of the United States, Thomas Edison, who never stopped looking for opportunities to learn from his recurrent failures before becoming one of the lead inventors of his day. We have Lee Myung-bak, who was born into a wretched family and eventually rose to be the president of South Korea, Harrison Ford, who faced multiple rejections during his early acting career but eventually, through perseverance and hard work, rose to be the star that he is today. In Nigeria, we have Cosmas Maduka, who rose from selling akara on the streets at the age of seven to becoming the CEO of Coscharis Group, a multi-billion dollar conglomerate, and Mike Adenuga, who used to work as a taxi driver to help fund his university education and is currently the third richest person in Africa.

Here’s the thing; as a Chinese proverb states, a gem is not polished without rubbing, nor a person perfected without trials. Most people are born with tremendous potential. The real question is whether they employ diligence and doggedness to their maximum. In the end, it is those who are dogged enough to resist the trials and difficulties that come with pushing towards goals that will be the winners in this journey of life.

Therefore, to achieve success, you need to be fearless, tenacious, and determined never the let the strong tide of failures, opposition and woes drown you. You need to face the obstacles head-on and be determined to stand your ground even as the storms threaten to knock you off the ground. You need to be dogged.

It helps to understand that for great things, the rewards don’t typically rise early. There are no overnight successes, in the true sense of the word. But here’s the thing about those later rewards, those that emerge after facing storms and difficulties and obstacles. Most of the time, they’re explosive. And very loud.

Hence, for anyone who suddenly shoots to the top, we all need to understand that he or she was propelled by a solid base of doggedness, resilience and tenacity. 

DEVELOPING DOGGEDNESS

11.  PASSION

The passion that is required for doggedness does not merely equate to intense feelings or emotions, but rather, deals with the inner drive that births consistency over an extended period of time. This type of passion does not deal with mere interests that come as quickly as they fade away but rather, what a person wants to achieve in life, the legacy a person wants to leave behind. It deals with a person’s purpose in life. It deals with an ultimate goal that a person is ready to loyally care about and put effort into.

The logic of the necessity for enduring passion is quite straightforward. If you do not know, in a very deep way, what you want in life and why you are pushing towards your goals, it becomes very easy to throw in the towel at the slightest wind of resistance or difficulty. It becomes easy to create those exquisite excuses we often use to delude ourselves from the truth of the fact that we just do not have the sustaining passion and drive to build up the diligence that keeps people pressing. It becomes easy to give up with few to zero regrets.

Resilience requires fierce resolve, fortitude. And same cannot be cultivated without having the right levels of passion to keep a person pushing.

22.  A MINDSET SHIFT

In developing doggedness, changing the way you think about failure is a fundamental requirement. We give failure more credit than it deserves, interpreting it as implying things that are much deeper than what it actually implies. Hence, most times, we give up at the first instance of failure or difficulty because we have come to ascribe failure as implying a lack of ability, lack of talent, or just plain unbreakable incompetence. But quite frankly, it is folly to give up and consider future attempts as a lost cause simply because your first couple of attempts weren’t successful, thereby allowing those failures to stop you from reaching your goals. Your projects and goals should not be considered impossible simply because they did not work out the first time. To put it quite simply, no one is perfect and everyone is bound to experience failures and difficulties whilst attempting to push towards dreams and goals.

Changing your opinion about failure and obstacles can be the one milestone to cross towards becoming dogged. The first step towards changing ingrained views regarding failure is to replace your irrational opinions about failure with the understanding that, as Robert Kiyosaki said, failure is part of the process of success and therefore, to avoid failure is also to avoid success. The truth remains that failures are going to happen on the journey to success and how one deals with them are the most important determinant of success.

The next step is to understand that failures are simply a sign of taking on challenges and that everyone has the ability to overcome failures. Then the last step is realising that there is a surplus of historical evidence that presses to the point that bouncing back after failure will only make an individual stronger and wiser.

And understanding these three truths will not only transform your mind, but will give you the fortitude and mental strength to persevere despite failure. Remember that the worst thing you can do to yourself is to let temporary setbacks become permanent excuses.

33. DILIGENCE

Here’s an unfailing truth: diligence is more important than natural talent. In fact, in several studies done to determine which, between diligence and natural talent, leads to success, diligence has always taken the lead. Always.

It comes, then, as common wisdom that a person simply cannot be dogged if the person is not disciplined and diligent. Diligence comes, in fact, as a condition precedent to developing doggedness. It is diligence that pushes a person to spend long hours learning, growing, engaging in deliberate practice, and putting in work irrespective of failures, obstacles and difficulties. Doggedness requires the ability to put one’s head down and go as hard as one can. It requires the ability to press on in the midst of impossibilities. And it is only diligence that grants a person the ability to do all that is required to be truly dogged.

All in all, doggedness is making the commitment to aggressively pursue goals that you believe in and value with discipline, tenacity and hard work. It is being ready to face all the risks that come one’s way in the journey to success. It is hard work, it is persistence, it is fierce determination. And it is impossible to succeed in life without cultivating doggedness.

On the 31^st of December, 2023, I lay on my bed and imagined how my life would be if I let myself be restricted by the various fears that threaten to overwhelm me whenever I try to make progress or venture into a new activity. I let myself visualise the horrors of living a life where 30, 40, 50 years down the line, I come face to face with the harsh reality that I have wasted my life succumbing to my fears of not being able to cope with failure, or the pressures of success, or my fears as regards my creativity and writing, the fears that I have no talent, that whatever I wish to write is not important or relevant enough to change lives or even attract patronage.

And I found myself envisioning a life wasted doing nothing, rotting and withered away, irrelevant, with nothing tangible to account for the years I have spent on earth. A life where, as an 80-year-old, I become aware of the fact that, as a result of letting my fears anchor me firmly to my comfort zone, my equals have gone miles ahead of me in every single sphere of life. Where I realise that the purpose of my life God has given to me was never fulfilled and it is now too late to do anything about it.

And I realised that having lived that sort of life would be the most devastatingly terrifying thing that would ever happen to me. So I decided to make a little personal proclamation against fear in view of the coming year. And I decided to make this blog post.

THIS PLAGUE CALLED FEAR

We all have experienced fear at many points in our lives. And we all know when fear likes to creep in, to show its ugly face, to envelop itself around our minds and hold on so tightly and fiercely that sometimes, we even have physical reactions to this feeling. Goosebumps, panic attacks, the urge to pee…

Some fear is instinctual and healthy and keeps us alert to trouble. The rest- the part that holds us back from personal growth, is inappropriate and destructive.

But fear is a constant. Fear doesn’t go away, won’t fade away and as long as you are alive, you will consistently and continually experience fear.

Apart from when faced with dangerous situations, fear usually arises when we approach big projects, when we walk towards change, when we want to try out new things, or big things, or overwhelming things. It usually comes along with negative thoughts which seek to convince you that you cannot handle whatever it is that you have set your mind to do.

And if you dwell on those thoughts long enough, the fear goes beyond more than just causing uneasiness or bowel distress. It cripples you. And the crippling can be for years, decades, hell, even the rest of a person’s life.  Because fear has the potential to become a desolate graveyard where dreams go to desiccate and decay.

You would think that such a devastatingly destructive feeling would be one that can fade away and dissipate if we kindly ask it to. But you cannot kill fear.

However, perhaps, there is a possibility to live with fear and yet live above it and its consequences. Perhaps there is a way to just make space for it, a nice little space where it can sit and watch you go conquer territories. Perhaps, there is a way to move, thrive despite the fear.

WHAT IS LIVING BEYOND FEAR?

Living beyond fear does not mean living in the absence of fear. It means living despite fear. It means realising that you would definitely not be successful at every single thing you set your hands to do, and not letting that stop you. It means realising that you might work for years and still fail at a project, and having that understanding not cripple you from actually taking steps towards your dreams. It means having the goosebumps and the panic and the shivers and still striding towards your goals and dreams.

It means living a life that is driven more strongly by curiosity, passion and courage than by fear. It means not letting fear take the front seat in your life

As Gilbert said, living beyond fear means telling fear that: “You’re allowed to have a seat, and you’re allowed to have a voice, but you are not allowed to have a vote. You’re not allowed to touch the road maps, you’re not allowed to suggest detours, you’re not allowed to fiddle with the temperature. Dude, you’re not even allowed to touch the radio. But above all else, my dear old familiar friend, you are absolutely forbidden to drive.”

It means not letting the question of ‘why bother trying?’ get hitched in your throats. It means not letting fear tell you that it would be better to remain in the same spot, where things are comfortable and normal and routine and where you would never have to do anything risky or dangerous.

The fact remains that whenever you try to take a chance, move towards a goal that you’ve always been terrified to venture into, to take steps towards pursuits that seem almost impossible, it is natural to experience fear. But in 2024, you have to resolve the conquer the fears that have held you back from actualising goals, that have held you from experiencing life the way you want to experience it. Gain mastery over your fears, for bravery is not the absence of fear but the mastery of it.

This 2024, be willing to take risks. Be willing to do whatever brings you to life. Be willing to set seemingly unrealistic New Year's resolutions and gun for them, regardless of the many times you have tried to live up to your resolutions and failed.

You will have to realise that achieving your goals takes nothing more than disciplined labour. Change is not easy. It takes courage to mould your life the way you want it to be. There are all sorts of real and imagined obstacles that get in the way. However, those obstacles need not deter you. Instead, choose to enjoy the ride, the agony and the ecstasy, the success and the failure, the joys and the pains, the difficulties and the confusions and the satisfaction and sense of fulfilment at having gotten work done.

A LITTLE BIT OF MOTIVATION FOR THE COMING YEAR

The truth remains that as long as you continue to push into the world, as long as you continue to stretch your capabilities, as long as you continue to take new risks in making your dreams come true, you are always going to experience fear. But you might be relieved to know that not only are you going to experience fear when you are in unfamiliar territory, but so is everyone else. The difference lies in whether you interpret fear as a signal to retreat rather than as a green light to move ahead.

The key is in altering your relationship with fear. So, this 2024, instead of trying to escape fear or letting it control your life, strive to transform it into a companion that accompanies you in all your exciting adventures and watch as you shoot for the heights of your dreams.

Happy New Year!