Muster Perseverance: RsH-G5

Regimens of Vantage

The challenge never responds to your efforts in an easy direct way: if it does then it was never a challenge (for you at least). So the overarching perspective that must be brought to bear in relation to everything considered to this point is the need for perseverance.

The function of mustering perseverance is to maximize the likelihood that you will eventually overcome difficulties, both within yourself and in external events. The importance of tenacity and hanging in there for dear life i.e. perseverance, is hardly new:
See quotes ►

Churchill: "Success is moving from failure to failure without losing confidence".
Re simplicity: "The next mile is the only one a person really has to make".
Re blows of fortune: “It ain't about how hard you can hit. It's about how hard you can get hit, and how much you can take, and keep moving forward.”
Re small wins: “Success is the sum of small efforts, repeated day in and day out.”
Edison: “I haven't failed. I've found 10,000 ways that don't work."
Edison: “I think and think for months and years, and ninety-nine times the conclusion is false. The hundredth time I am right.”
Einstein: “You never fail until you stop trying."
Re the size of the task: “The man who removes a mountain begins by carrying away small stones.”
Re the easy life: “There are no shortcuts to any place worth going.”
Re wrong thinking: “When you have exhausted all possibilities, remember this: you haven't. ”
Hannibal (Carthaginian General): “We will either find a way or make one."
Thackeray: “To endure is greater than to dare; to tire out the hostile fortune; to be daunted by no difficulty; to keep heart when all have lost it—who can say this is not greatness? ”
Re final results: “Great works are performed not by strength but by perseverance."
Re tough times: “If you are going through hell, keep going."

The present framework proposes that perseverance manifests as three distinct regimens. These regimens are:

Determination: RG5³
Justification: RG5²
Motivation: RG5¹

The regimens require considerable self-discipline because they may have minimal external support while making continuing demands on you. Instead of guarantees of success, you simply gain vantage i.e. you will be positioned in a way that affords you superiority and advantage as events evolve. Neglect these openings and you lose that potential.

The Structure of Perseverance

Perseverance emerges with a painful awareness of your limitations. The challenge demands so much of you. It is impossible to concentrate on all of it simultaneously. You cannot fight the system, and you must respect the reality of your failures and recognize inexorable social forces. So perseverance requires you to be selective in a way that is adaptive to the evolving situation. This is the quality that is provided by adding a 5^th adjacent Level in using willpower.

In general, weakness of any willpower component will result in a lack of determination, an unsatisfactory justification, or poor motivation. More subtle difficulties arise from the failure to handle the component appropriately.

Where the three regimens overlap, there are stringent demands on you:

When you intensify communication,

you must be shrewd to ensure proper determination.
you must be reflective to be persuaded by your justifications
you must be adaptive to develop motivation.

When you intensify experiences,

you must be sensible to ensure proper determination
you must be shrewd to be persuaded by your justifications
you must be reflective to develop your motivation.

When you target change,

your target must be meaningful to ensure proper determination
you must be sensible to be persuaded by your justifications
you must be shrewd to develop your motivation.

With perseverance-RG5 and its triple whammy of determination, justification and motivation, it might seem that the maximum that you can expect of yourself has been reached.

Investigate the internal structure of these Regimens of Vantage further.

However, perseverance alone is not enough. Especially when you come to a major block. Unless you get a breakthrough, you will be stuck. The project will fail and the challenge will not be met. Such breakthroughs are often viewed, unhelpfully, as the essence of creativity.

Breakthroughs require yet more complex mental-imaginative work and play a major role in any creative process. Continue to the demand for immersion.

Originally posted: 31-Jan-2012