Most of us have heard the saying, “If at first you don’t succeed, try, try again.”
Well, I like Dallas Willard’s version much better, “If at first you don’t succeed- find out what went wrong, fix it, and then try again.”
This reminds me of when my son was first learning to ride his two wheel bike. He was about 5 years old and his bike still had training wheels. He would be riding along slowly and he would come to a bump in the road. The bike would stop. He would try to get over the hump in the same way, over and over again, getting more and more frustrated after each failed attempt. I remember his father’s wise words to him, “Stop, think, try something different.”
Persistence is good, but intelligent persistence is even better. It’s the difference between kicking on a door till it breaks vs. going and finding the key to open it. It’s the difference between repeatedly telling your teenager to do the right thing vs. finding out what his barriers are and showing him how to remove them. Persistence may pay off in the end, however, intelligent persistence pays off sooner.
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