Failure Cannot Cope With Persistence

"Failure cannot cope with persistence"  ~Napoleon Hill

Genius.  I have read a lot of quotes on failure but none  have struck a chord with me like this one.  It's so simple yet so deeply powerful.  So much of success is based on persistence and to include persistence in failure is a brilliant idea.  But even more brilliant is to use the word "cope" with failure and persistence.  It's like a perfect quote about failure and the possibilities of success without ever needing to use the word success because it's implied with the connection of the words from failure to cope to persistence, cope being the key and strongest word in this entire quote.  If you are persistent in something that you want, failure cannot cope with that.  It simply cannot cope with persistence because of the power persistence holds.  If you keep trying and keep trying and keep trying for something, failure simply cannot cope, it cannot keep up with your persistence if you keep trying.

In my 20's I have felt much like a failure in a lot of things or that I had failed at a lot of things.  But I also have set a very high standard for myself and all that I set out to do so feeling like a failure or feeling that I have failed can be easy for me.  But there has been something that has been a constant with me no matter what and that has been persistence.  Though I have felt like it many a time, I have yet to completely give up and let failure take a place in my life.  Failure cannot cope with my daily persistence.

But yet, somehow, everyday I feel like a failure.  Seems like such a contradiction with what I just said but somehow I can't shake that feeling of failure.  I had a therapy appt today and I usually share those with you and this is unlike any other day.  I have always been self-critical and evidently there's a name for that and it's "body dysmorphia."  yeah, I have that.  Even when I was running 50 miles a week and weighed 98lbs, it still wasn't thin enough so you can imagine how I feel now that I have gained all this weight from being tube fed the amount of calories I was fed for the amount of time in the hospital.  I mean, if I was self-critical with no scars and weighing 98lbs, what must you think I feel now?  What I think inside my self-critical mind?  I won't get into it but I'll tell you it's pretty bad.  But I like to think of this quote when I'm filling with my head with self-critical thoughts and believe that with persistence, failure simply cannot cope.