Increase Your Tenacity To Finally Build That Skill!

Sometimes it’s a struggle to stay positive when we’re working on a new skill or habit, and progress seems slow.

Sometimes we think about giving up.

But keep in mind, there are three things required for real change: commitment, ingenuity and tenacity. Have we given our new habit or skill a real, fighting chance?

Commitment here means truly wanting something, really prioritizing it, and protecting it as though it were sacred.

Ingenuity means getting creative and experimenting… with how to fit, into our busy, crazy lives, some learning time, some practice time, and opportunities for feedback from experts (or at least people further along than we are).

We might have to make sacrifices for this.

Sometimes we don’t even have a realistic idea of what kind of time and energy is required to get good at something. And we need to find that out, and decide if we’re up for it. Honestly.

Assuming we decide to go ahead with it, it might be a good moment to think about our tenacity.

Tenacity means giving a fledgling skill the proper nourishment and time to grow. Asking for help when needed. Taking a breath and remembering that patience is a virtue.

Tenacity means cultivating a lasting determination to stick with an effort till a goal is reached – not in a mindless, repetitive way but strategically: observing, collecting data, and tweaking both actions and mindset when needed.

Tenacity works hand-in-hand with commitment and ingenuity. Clearly if you’re not really committed, you’re not going to have much staying power when the going gets rough. You will get distracted and, oftentimes, discouraged.

And if you’re not ingenious enough, you won’t have the flexible, design thinking that, truly, we all need to juggle our responsibilities these days. You’ve got to try stuff and see how it works, and then act smarter based on the results.

The great news is that you can expand your tenacity. It’s also a skill! And requires practice. But it will unlock a lot of other things for you, and save you time, effort and energy in the end.

You can think of it as a muscle. To build tenacity, keeping doing stuff you’re bad at (e.g., a new hobby, sport, etc.). You can start with low-stakes learnings and move up to skills that might require more courage and persistance.

What are some key components that feed into the trait of tenacity? Having faith in yourself, being patient, being reflective, and being able to look at things with some objective distance. 

Everybody has a least a few of these qualities to some degree, and they all help you build your tenacity muscle.

Good luck!