jennybobenny

Persistence is my personal bugbear. It’s plagued my family too. We’ve all got the ability in buckets to achieve things, but we don’t apply ourselves and persist with the job until it’s finished. We fail because we don’t persist. sigh How to learn persistence?

I liked this article: http://realtytimes.com/rtpages/20090220_persist.htm

21. Outliers: The Story of Success – Malcolm Gladwell

Very thought-provoking and I covered it in a single day of listening via audiobook-mp3 while getting the chores done. I love having something really interesting to listen to while I’m getting menial tasks done!

His main theory (backed up with relevant examples and statistics) is that no one is successful because of in-born talent or greatness, that anyone’s success can be attributed to years of prior effort and dedication and of sometimes generations of events in history contributing to it. I did have moments where I thought it almost seemed a case of arguing for a fatalistic attitude, but he points out his examples because in paying attention, we can possibly increase our child’s, or our town’s, or our country’s abilities to produce and nurture successful people.

I don’t know what I was thinking when I wrote the first entry for this goal, it reads a little crazed to me now.

At the moment I’m just plugging on with doing one unit at a time via distance, part-time. I’ve figured that I’ll finish up just as all of our (3) children reach school-age, and so I’ll be able to pick up some part-time work while they’re at school.

My other reasons for doing the degree are that 1) it’s the easiest option for me at the moment without having to find and pay for fulltime care for our small children, and 2) I need to get some qualifications if (touch wood) anything bad happens to my husband as current sole provider eg – losing his job or becoming ill or injured, or – the worst – passing away. I hope HOPE nothing bad EVER happens, but of course I need to be realistic and have contingency plans in place so that we both can continue to raise our little family well.