Personal Development wisdom says that it’s perseverance that begets success far more frequently than intelligence. But, go to a school or if you’ve come out of one, you’re being trained to believe that being a smarty pants with all ‘A’ pluses is the way to get whatever you want. So, who’s right?
Perseverance beats Intelligence
Getting whatever you want in life is almost always akin to having the finances to support it all. So, do these academic high achievers really get it all? Hardly. Most people out of school live and work as one of the very well school system trained workers as society’s labour force. Name any number of professors in the best schools and they are unlikely to be at the top of the social or financial ladder. They rarely do. However, what about the enigmatic great modern scientist and thinker Stephen Hawking? Could he be the exception?
Stephen Hawking suffers from a severely degenerative disease but his success is undeniable. He is one of the heroes of science today. Yet, was it his sheer intelligence or his pit bull like perseverance that he is still producing some of the best scientific works known? I’d say his perseverance has seen him live to accomplish the work he loves. And it is this love that drives him to persevere when all else has failed. That is success.
In fact, research and even Forbes magazine has made it well known that among the world’s billionaires, the majority had not finished high school. Some had little or no schooling at all. So, what seems to be their secret to success? All these billionaires really offered one general conclusion that it was their great belief in what they do and of themselves. Their drive is given of boundless energy, imagination and confidence. Their stories do not end here. They hire the brightest and smartest to work for them. Now, what has become of the best brains then? They work for the ones that strived in the knowledge that they would succeed come what may.
