Informative Essay: Lowell Heckman
Instructor: Sheila Allard
Tenacity: Vital to Success
For many, the demands of college are the greatest challenges they have yet faced. Daily, students are exposed to a barrage of new ideas that they must quickly grasp to meet ever present deadlines. This unrelenting process is made more difficult with schedule conflicts with work, financial difficulties, and other personal problems. Many are overwhelmed by it all, yet every year people graduate while others dropout.
In most cases, only one thing separates those that graduate from those that dropout. That one thing is tenacity. Tenacity is found in all people that succeed and it has benefits even in failure.
Those that have tenacity will not quit when confronted by obstacles or when failing. In a game or in life, tenacity wants to win, and tenacity lives by the credo, “Failure is not an option.” When failure is imminent, tenacity is the inner voice that declares, “I will not be denied!”
Whether it is known as willpower, determination, or persistence, it is the key to success. It pushes one to one’s limits because it will not accept anything less than one’s best. In the end, people with tenacity will win or break themselves trying, but just by giving their all, they have grown.
The importance of tenacity is stressed by those that have studied success. Napoleon Hill spent twenty years studying success and was a pioneer in the field. Hill determined that persistence was a key factor in achieving success. In his monumental book, Think and Grow Rich, Hill states, “Lack of persistence is one of the major causes of failure. Moreover, experience with thousands of people has proved that lack of persistence is a weakness common to the majority of men” (152). Hill goes on to say, “One thing we all know, if one does not possess persistence, one does not achieve noteworthy success in any calling”
(155).
Anthony Robbins has built a multi-million
Cited: Dubos, Rene J. Louis Pasteur: Free Lance of Science. Boston: Little, Brown and Company, 1950. Hill, Napoleon. Think and Grow Rich. New York: Fawcett Crest, 1960. Plashin, Glenn. Turning Point: Pivotal Moments in the Lives of America’s Celebrities. New York: Carol Publishing Group, 1992. Robbins, Anthony. Unlimited Power. New York: Simon & Schuster, 1986. April 7, 2003 2