It has dinned on us that persistence is the key to success.

We know, without getting into the details, that many successful people have followed this mantra to the core, and so, we must persist to achieve our goals no matter how many failures we encounter.

However, persistence shouldn’t be a blind force because it can backfire or become a trap to our aspirations.

No one has told us that besides persistence, an essential attitude to attaining the desired success is to believe in ourselves. Yes. We must believe in ourselves, and we must believe in our story, which is the most challenging part: trust in what we are capable of. Yes, because when we know what we are capable of, we trust ourselves to accomplish anything we have set as our goal.

So, yes, I can, is the attitude we must always keep in mind and heart. Yet, we never know what we are capable of until we are at a point where we must do it, no matter what it is, because there are no alternatives left. A friend of mine suffered the amputation of one of her legs. She said I don’t know if I can live like this. She was destroyed. A couple of years later, she practices sports she had never practiced before and feels proud of her body and the artificial limb.

But where, when, and how can we learn to trust ourselves, something that no school, college, or university teaches, but life, yes, only life?

And so, as I go through life, I have learned to:

1.- Trust ourselves; we must first know our limitations, which also means being honest with ourselves and others.

2.- Learn that our worst enemy is ourselves—this and listening to negative people. Oh my, this is the worst of the worst. Turn around and run the faster you can away from negative people. People who tell you, no, you can’t do this or that. No matter who these people are, run away from them.

3. So, know yourself, your strengths and limitations, and most importantly, understand what you want to achieve with the acquired knowledge.

Life is not a straight line, but you can make it straight if you follow this advice: believe in your own story. I published my first book at 70 years old while I was in the middle of a cancer fight. I remember taking the train to go to visit my editor just days after my surgery with my belly full of bandages, feeling weak, and still carrying the bulb that drained the fluids out of my body. And with lots of pain. (My editor didn’t know about my condition until she saw me in her office and was alarmed). But that wasn’t important to me at that moment. The urgent thing for me was finishing what I started because I believed in myself and my work.

In conclusion, the only force we need is to believe in ourselves; from then on, life will be a straight line.