Persevere

There is a word someone used recently and I really cannot shake it.  The word is “persevere.”  Merriam-Webster defines it as “to undertake in spite of counter influences, opposition or discouragement.”  Cambridge says, “to continue to exist despite a difficult or changing situation.”
I guess I find the word fascinating as it feels like it is pretty opposite to my way of operating in the past.
I used to look at people with either a certain degree of envy or admiration as it seemed they just hung in there.  Me, I was into this big time, then into something else.  So often what I was into was diametrically opposed to the original.
Of late I am endevouring to hang in or persevere.  I have decided I am at my best when I do the right thing despite not feeling like it.  To me it is easy to do the right thing when I feel like it.  But it is plain harder to do the right thing when I would rather do something else.
Bit like an athlete training for a race.  They know pizza is not the best thing to have while they are training.  Training time is the time for sacrifice.  The time for not doing what they long to do.  For some things there may come a time when it is ok.  After the race.  But before it if they want to put in a peak performance, they need to watch what they do - choose only activities that aid and abet their endevours.  I feel the same way.  For me right now is not the time to be goofing off - following every whim.
But for sure I am one for moderation and balance.  It is pointless to me to set off at a great rate of knots and run out of steam before the end.  It seems to me to be especially hard to maintain moderation when trying to achieve something that may have not been achieved before.  But I take solace from the fact that when I don’t know the way to go, I follow those who have been there, or some of the way there, before.
There may come a time when like some of the entrepreneurs of the past, I travel a road untrodden.  But from what I see even those that break new ground have a back up crew that do things the way they need to be done.  That enables someone else to go to new places.  Places someone may have not been before but I reckon the truth has nothing to fear from honest analysis.
To me perseverance is needed for any long-term goal.  There is inevitably discouragement and disappointment.  But what is right at the start remains right through thick and thin.  I need to stay the course despite the storm as there is what I long for waiting on the other side.