All of us must have heard the proverb: "Winners never quit and quitters never win".

Time and again, we have seen the value of persistence in the lives of successful people in whatever field they were, whether in business, politics, sports etc.

But there may be a lot many men and women who persisted in trying to achieve something yet they failed. You may be among them, you may have been trying to achieve something from many years and still have not succeeded.

So what is the difference between people who persist and finally succeed and people who fail despite persisting tirelessly?

There is a very important difference. People who persist and still fail in achieving their desired goals, are usually those who keep on doing the same thing again and again and yet expect a different result.

Persistence is not about repeating the same thing over and over and hoping for a different result each time. Such persistence is misguided and not likely to help much.

People who have tasted success are usually those who learn from their mistakes, change their approach, and keep trying new things till they are able to finally achieve their desired result.

You may find such people are open-minded, willing to learn, try new approaches and don’t assume they know everything. All of these are very important traits.

Thomas A. Edison seems to have failed 10,000 times before finally inventing the light bulb. Now each time he failed, he tried another experiment and kept on doing it. He didn't repeat the same experiment 10,000 times hoping for a favorable result. If he had done that, then most likely the light bulb would not have been invented, not by him at least.

So remember the following points while pursuing your goals:

1. Be persistent.
2. Try another approach if the earlier one didn’t work.
3. Keep an open mind and be willing to learn, specially from your mistakes. # Do not assume that you know everything.
4. Do not think that you have tried all possible approaches. You may have tried all approaches that you are aware of, but there may be things that you don’t currently know. So focus on finding newer approaches

This is the kind of persistence that we need. Read about a useful attitude to develop which can help you with your goals: An important attitude for success