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Thought and Opinion|Reading Time: 2 minutes

In the face of adversity, are you a Guernsey or a Brahman?

If the mother of a Guernsey and a Brahma calf dies, one of the calves will survive and one will not. One thing makes the difference. And is it the very factor that keeps us from reaching what we want most.

***

Persistence in the face of defeat often makes the difference in outcome.

Ask any farmer, and they will tell you that orphaned Guernsey calves die. It’s not the fact that they die, so much as how it happens, that stays in the mind. An orphaned calf soon gets so hungry she picks a new mother from the herd. The cow promptly kicks the strange calf away. After all, she didn’t give birth to the calf—why should she feed it? The Guernsey calf gives up, lies down, and slowly starves to death.

The orphaned Brahman calf gets a different result. The same scenario plays out, with the calf being kicked out by the reluctant mother. However, in this case, the naturally persistent calf keeps coming, until the potential new mother acquiesces out of exhaustion. As a result of this persistence, the calf survives.

Persistence is hard. It’s hard to get kicked in the face and to keep going. It hits at your self-esteem. You begin to wonder if you have value. You begin to think you might be crazy.

So often we’re told that having a positive attitude is the important thing. You can get through the setbacks if you find the silver linings and believe in what you are doing. But it’s important to remember that persistence and a positive attitude aren’t the same thing. They differ in some pretty fundamental ways.

Positivity is fragile. If you’re positively certain that you’ll be successful, you’ll start to worry the minute things deviate from your plan. Once this worry seeps into your mind, it’s impossible to get out. You’re done. When the going gets tough, positive attitudes often vanish.

Persistence, on the other hand, anticipates roadblocks and challenges. It gears up for the fact that things never go as planned and expects goals to be hard to attain.

If you run into failure, persistence continues, and positivity disappears. Persistence is antifragile and benefits from setbacks, while positivity, like that Guernsey calf, crumbles when it runs into hard times.

When met with setbacks, are you a Guernsey or a Brahman?

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