Tag Archives: persistence

Uncategorized

Determination

Leave a comment

I recently saw a post that reminded me failure is not an indicator of future success.

Take note:

  • Tom Brady wasn,t selected until the 6th round of the NFL draft (199th pick) due to slow foot speed, lack of arm strength,  couldn’t throw a tight spiral and said he couldn’t improvise if a play broke down
  • The greatest basketball player of all time, Michael Jordan, was cut from his high school team.
  • Walt Disney was fired from his job at a newspaper early in his career–they said he lacked imagination.
  • Jerry Seinfeld was booed off stage in his first stand-up comedy appearance.
  • Sir James Dyson suffered through 5,126 failed prototypes before he landed on the first working Dyson vacuum.

There are many, many other examples, both of famous personages  and not so famous people, that reinforce the concept, determination and persistence do lead to success.

Personal Experience

In the mid-2000’s, I was in a career rut and needed a change. In the past I had sought to move myself in different directions with middling success.

This time, I decided to persist until I made the career move of my dreams.  It took over approximately 350 direct and indirect applications over 7 months, resulting in more than 50 interviews (some I rejected myself, some I was not successful).

Ultimately, I did secure the job of my dreams, senior director of a large application development  and support team.  This only occurred through perseverance.

Simple Advice

Like the advice in the post I recently read, directed to an individual searching a career change, don’t be disheartened by failure, the odds   are in your favour for success in the long term, keep on going, you will get there.

Uncategorized

I think I can.

Leave a comment

A childhood story book that still resonates strongly with me today was “The Little Engine that Could” by Watty Piper.  A simple story of how obstacles can be overcome through the power of positive thinking.

The little steam engine of the story starts off being unable to pull the train up the hill.  Motivated by positive thinking ranging from I think I can, morphing to I know I can  results in success.

Persistence will be Rewarded

The moral of the story is not to give up even if success takes time and multiple attempts.  You can do it.  Of course this not always true, but by being persistent you will at least get you as far as you can go.

About six months ago I decided to implement secure socket layer (ssl) security for this website.   While it may sound simple, this was not the case.

My journey to Security

SSL enables viewers of the website to be sure of the owner and data transfers to and from the site are encrypted to ensure the information transferred cannot be intercepted.

To do this the web server needs to be certified by a trusted third party.  There are a number of ways to do this.  To make a long story short, six months ago I chose the simplest method and thus began my journey of persistence.

As is so often the case with technology the unexpected rears its ugly head and what should have been simple led me down a long path of encountering and resolving unplanned difficulties, lots of them.

However, finally I prevailed and not only is this site now accessed through https (i.e., ssl) my mail server is now a separate sub- domain (best practice) and all are using a content delivery network (Cdn)  called cloud-flare.

Persistence paid off, I can and did do it.