In her autobiography titled Dolly, Dolly Parton says, “My high school was small. So during a graduation event, each of us got a chance to stand up and announce our plans for the future. ‘I’m going to junior college,’ one boy would say. ‘I’m getting married and moving to Maryville,’ a girl would follow. When my turn came, I said, ‘I’m going to Nashville to become a star.’ The entire place erupted in laughter. I was stunned. Somehow, though, that laughter instilled in me an even greater determination to realize my dream. I might have crumbled under the weight of the hardships that were to come had it not been for the response of the crowd that day. Sometimes it’s funny the way we find inspiration.”
That little girl went on to write over three thousand songs. Today, Dolly, the fourth of twelve children, holds the
record for the number of awards for a female artist—including seven Grammys and an Emmy. In 1986, the year her theme park, Dollywood, opened, gross business revenues for the city of Pigeon Forge, Tennessee, jumped 47 percent. Her Imagination Library program has been adopted in six hundred communities in forty-one states. With her triple skills as a businesswoman, entertainer, and philanthropist, Dolly is respectfully referred to as the “Tennessee Icon.”
You may identify determination even in a child; if for example, she is able to delay gratification by saving her allowance for a future goal instead of spending it now. In the 1960s, Walter Mischel conducted a now-famous experiment at Stanford University. Four-year-olds were given a marshmallow and promised another, if only they could wait twenty minutes before eating the first one. Some children could wait and others could not. The researchers then followed all the children into adolescence and demonstrated that those with the ability to wait were better adjusted and more dependable, and scored an average of 210 points higher on the Scholastic Aptitude Test.
So, are you swayed by today’s circumstances or determined to pursue your worthy long-term goals?
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Determination is one of the 5 required characteristics for success. (From No More Dreaded Mondays)
