Since Adam and Eve were escorted out of the Garden of Eden, human beings have been on a search to find the secret of success.
It might be better described as a quest, really.
The truth of it is that the people who look for it the hardest are the ones who are most likely to never find it. That’s because they reject what success really is in exchange for the delusion of their own mind’s vision of what level of achievement they deserve.
They miss out on the whole point.
I don’t claim to know everything. I don’t claim to be either smart or wise…certainly not as wise as some of you think I am.
But there is something I know with great certainty.
I know the secret to success.
Perseverance.
It’s that simple.
OK, so it’s not really that simple. If it was, everyone would be able to do it. For sure it’s a lot simpler to say it than it is to carry it out.
Dr. Chuck Swindoll is someone who I look up to and think very highly of. He says, “life is 10-percent what happens to you and 90-percent how you react to it.”
He is 100-percent correct.
The most recent example of this is the Warsaw football team.
They were 3-1 headed to Dunlap for their first showdown with Concord. You know what happened there.
They came home to play Plymouth and let a win slip through their grasp—for the second time in eight days.
They were injured.
They were reeling.
Doubt was knocking on their door.
And with a Mishawaka team that is still playing in the 4A playoffs coming to Warsaw the next week, the Tigers’ were standing with their heels at the edge of the proverbial cliff.
All they had left was a choice—to fight on or to fall off.
They chose to fight.
Mishawaka came…and went home unhappy.
NorthWood thought they had the Tigers beat up 21-0 in the first quarter in Week 8, and the Tigers fought back.
Northridge had all of the momentum going their way, and the Tigers yanked it back away from them.
The playoffs came, and Warsaw removed any thought of an upset by Goshen with a sharp focus from the start.
Then the rematch with top-ranked Concord in which it was the Tigers that struck the final blow in the game’s dying seconds, and with it came the school’s second sectional football championship.
A home regional game against 5A #2 Lafayette Jeff— one of the state’s best offenses averaging 45 points a night and a defense that had forced 37 turnovers in 11 games. They committed no turnovers and hung 44 points on the Bronchos while forcing them into four and holding them to 27 points.
And now they are in the semi-state for the first time ever, where they will find themselves standing nose-to-nose against the greatest player in their school’s history—Brad Seiss and his Merrillville Pirates.
These Tigers have had many chances to faulter, and they have refused.
Perseverance.
It’s a lesson for us all to learn and store in the warehouse of our minds.
When things seem darkest and hardest, and you are asked the question of what you will do next, how will you respond?
When the doctor walks into the room with the results of the tests. When your boss calls you into their office for an unexpected meeting. When the phone rings in the middle of the night. When your spouse tells you it’s not worth it anymore?
How will you respond?
What will you say? What will you do?
The Warsaw football team, faced with a two-game losing streak which could just as easily have been two victories, chose to do the most basic and simple thing possible.
They chose to go to Monday’s practice.
They put their doubts behind them and fell back on what they knew…and they trusted each other.
They have not lost a game since.
The key to success, in relationships, in marriages, in business, in leadership and in following—in everything.
Perseverance.