A Single Step Doesn’t Get You to a Journey of 1,000 Miles
By: Michelle Loucadoux
Tags: Life Lessons, Success, Self Improvement, Personal Growth, Personal Development

“A journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step.”

This quote is credited to Lao Tzu, but it’s highly misleading (also, according to some people, Lao Tzu may or may not have existed at all). The thing is, this quote doesn’t give you the whole story.

The importance of the first step in any journey cannot be discounted, but the steps in between the first and last are just as important. In fact, the steps that take you through the rain, up the mountains, and through any hardship are even more important than the excitement of the first one.

Along any journey, people get lost, they find other paths to pursue, or they just plain give up. Others, though, repeatedly make the decision to keep journeying on through hardship. It is these individuals, the people who can persevere through adversity, who succeed.

A study of over 11,000 cadets at the U.S. Miltary Academy at West Point measured which traits were the most prevalent in high-achieving cadets. Professors Amy Duckworth and Michael Matthews measured soldiers’ intelligence, physical ability, and perseverance to see which was the highest indicator of success. Guess what? By a long shot, it was perseverance.

Moderate levels of physical and cognitive ability helped these young soldiers. Still, by and large, a soldier’s willingness to pursue meaningful goals through adversity was the major indicator of success at the academy. My guess is that these cadets are the ones that would have completed the journey of 1,000 miles as well.

Interestingly enough, in this study, if the cadets in the top percentage of the super smart and super fit didn’t also possess grit, they were even more likely to fail than the average participant.

“Another finding is that, at the very highest levels of cognitive and physical ability, cadets were less likely to graduate from West Point.” If a cadet was naturally physically strong or cognitively gifted, they would not have had to work as hard and, thus, would have been less likely to have developed the grit it would take to succeed.

How many people do you know that start a new blog and then abandon it in 4–6 months? How many uncompleted Duolingo courses do you think there are in the world? How many abandoned garden projects? How many business ideas that have fallen to the wayside?

The people that succeed are not the ones that are the smartest or the richest or the luckiest. Actually, it’s more likely to not be those people. It’s the people that have learned how to work for success throughout their lives that achieve it in the long run.

According to Inc Magazine, high achievers, on average, have some combination of passion, persistence, principles, purpose, performance, persuasion, and a powerful personal philosophy. One must have a passion to begin a journey of 1,000 miles, but they must have the persistence to complete it.

How do you increase your likelihood to be persistent? By having a strong purpose behind what you’re doing. Knowing why you’re doing something is one of the most important parts of success. A strong WHY can inspire years of hard work. And yes, persistence. If you don’t have a reason why you’re working toward a goal, here’s how to find one.

No great journey is completed without adversity. No great company is successful without a few pivots along the way. And no successful person has lived a life without some kind of hardship. Yes, a journey of 1,000 miles begins with a single step, but if you don’t take the next 1,999,999 steps, you’ll never get to where you’re going.