Start with fighting the factors (F.A.I.L.) that discourage and derail perseverance. Fatigue via safeguarding concentration abilities by sticking to regular sleep routines. Anxiety via expressing that love is not contingent to success. Identity based on fast achievements via growth mindset as success is not fixed and praising efforts instead of results. Learning expectations that don’t match abilities via setting them slightly above skill level, not too high nor lower.
Teach that mistakes are growth opportunities. Mistakes can be a positive thing if elaborated and extracted learnings, while praising the effort. Admitting own mistakes can help recognise that everyone makes them and setbacks shouldn’t define people.
Chunk and slice tasks. Dividing big ones into smaller allows these to become manageable and increases confidence about completing these over time. Frustration and feeling of being overwhelmed about complexity can be defeated by one task at a time.
Celebrate small wins continuously encourages to keep going on and on, as by contrary, repeated failure can destroy perseverance.
Stretch the focus leveraging the time. Once an assignment is particularly challenging you can leverage a timer, with an appropriate length of time tailored to the attention span, to encourage to complete as many as possible tasks and solve problems until the time is up. Over time the focus will improve.
Correct stumblers with a personal touch, as giving up might be generated by lack of solution. Leverage empathy acknowledging frustration and express it is natural in front of a difficult challenge. Propose support, but narrowed to the first immediate problem to solve, to allow progress towards the ultimate goal.
Praise always effort and not intelligence. Effort is directly linked with motivation while intelligence is extraneous motivator and actually praise on the latter can reduce perseverance. The goal is to be driven to succeed by inner motivators such as effort or thrive for value creation.
Come up with short, positive statements such as “Things don’t have to be perfect. I will get better and better if I keep trying” to repeat when things get challenging rather than relying on negative self-talk such as “I can’t do it” or “I’m not smart enough”.
Step back and let them figure it out. Each time you fix others’ errors or do something for them, they increasingly learn to depend on you. Once you understand a task can be completed alone, take a step back and allow them to embrace the feeling of accomplishment.
Source: Thrivers, M. Borba