Character strength · Courage
Perseverance as a character strength: meaning and examples
The short answer: perseverance is the habit of finishing what you start, and of keeping going when the task becomes boring, hard or discouraging. It is one of the 24 character strengths of the VIA classification, in the Courage family: the strengths of will.
What perseverance looks like
Perseverance is quiet. It rarely looks impressive in the moment; it shows in what gets finished over months. People with a lot of it tend to:
- come back to a task the next day, even when yesterday went badly
- finish books, courses and projects rather than collect half-done ones
- see a setback as information, not as a verdict
- keep their word on small commitments as well as large ones
- feel uneasy leaving something incomplete
In everyday life
At work, perseverance is the person who sees a long project through the dull middle part, when the excitement of the start has gone and the end is not yet in sight. In training for a race, learning a language or saving money, it is the steady repetition that adds up. In relationships, it shows as staying with a hard conversation instead of dropping it.
Perseverance is often confused with talent. In practice, much of what looks like talent is many hours of returning to the same thing.
Perseverance and the strengths close to it
- Self-control manages impulses in the moment. Perseverance keeps effort going over time. Each makes the other easier.
- Hope is the belief that effort will pay off. It is often what keeps perseverance going when results are slow.
- Zest brings energy to a task. Perseverance carries on when the energy has run out.
When perseverance is overdone, or underused
Overdone, perseverance becomes stubbornness: pushing on with a plan that has stopped making sense, or finishing something only because it was started. It can also crowd out rest, relationships and health. Underused, goals stay as intentions, and it becomes easy to give up at the first obstacle.
A useful habit is to agree with yourself, before you start, on the point at which you would call it off. Then stopping becomes a choice, not a failure.
Is perseverance one of your top strengths?
Ask yourself:
- Do you usually finish what you start, even when it stops being enjoyable?
- Do people rely on you to see things through?
- Does an unfinished task stay on your mind until it is done?
If you answered yes to most of these, perseverance may be one of your signature strengths. The only way to know how it compares with your other 23 is to rank them.
Find your top strengths with the free test
Where this comes from
The 24 character strengths were described by psychologists Christopher Peterson and Martin Seligman in Character Strengths and Virtues: A Handbook and Classification (2004). Happy Me's assessment uses public-domain questions from the International Personality Item Pool and is not affiliated with the VIA Institute.