There is only one surefire way to fail:  to give up.  As long as you are still trying, you haven't actually failed; you merely haven't succeeded yet.  One of history's best examples of this is Thomas Edison and the invention of the electric light bulb.  Early in his quest to produce light from electricity, Edison realized that the key was the filament -- the little wire that glows inside the bulb.  If he could not find a material that did not melt, incinerate, or grow brittle and crumble from the heat of a sustained current passing through it, he knew a practical light bulb was an impossibility.  So, in the late 1870s he sent members of his research team all over the world in search of potential materials for the filament.  The cost was enormous.  Every conceivable metal, fiber, and mineral was tested in his lab.  And they all failed.  The most credible accounts give the number of failed experiments at over 5,000.  The project was draining Edison's financial resources at an alarming rate, so in 1879, when some 5,000 different materials had failed to produce a workable filament, the chief researcher on the project pleaded with Edison to abandon the idea.  Edison is reputed to have replied, "If you've tried 5,000 things that didn't work, you must be close to finding the one that will.  Keep trying."  Within a week, his lab tested a new carbon fiber that lasted 40 hours.  Within two years, improvements to this fiber had it lasting around 1,500 hours.

The incandescent light bulb is considered one of Edison's greatest successes.  Yet, how many people would keep trying after 4,999 failures?!  Perseverance made all the difference!  The Japanese version of this statement from the Dojo Kun is, "Sen-tan ban-ren ni tessuru koto," which means "Whether it takes 1,000 practices or 10,000 training drills, get through."  Appropriately, the words tan and ren that mean practice and training in this context are used to mean forge, refine, and polish when applied to metal-working.  

Perseverance is hard work!  That's why so few people practice it.  Legendary football coach, Vince Lombardi put perseverance in its proper context for athletes and budōka when he said, "It doesn't matter how many times you get knocked down.  What matters is how many times you get back up."  He understood that the principle underlying perseverance is quite sample: to succeed at anything all you have to do is try one more time than you fail.

It's the practice of perseverance; not the principle, that is difficult for most of us. It's not easy to pick yourself back up when you're tired, injured, sore, discouraged, and the people around you are yelling at you to stay down for your own sake.  But that's how you prepare for real life.

Every so often, life just knocks the wind out of you.  It may come in the form of a job loss, the death of a loved one, a serious injury, a setback to your ambitions, or a divorce or break-up.  Whatever form it takes, it will spiritually, emotionally, and/or physically knock you face-down in the mud.  If you haven't developed perseverance, you may never fully recover.  If you have, it's likely to be the stimulus that drives you to achieve something even greater than you would have done without the set-back.  As the Apostle James put it:

"Consider it all joy, my brethren, when you encounter various trials, knowing that the testing of your faith produces endurance.  And let endurance have its perfect result, that you may be perfect and complete, lacking in nothing."  (James 1:2-4, NASB).

Consider it joy ... in other words, resolve in your mind that whatever set-back or adversity you are facing is going to make you stronger, more determined, and more capable than you are now  -- and that when you have succeeded in overcoming it you will be one step closer to being perfect and complete.