There's a profound difference between perseverance and endurance, and unless you’re a word-nerd or leadership consultant (I’m both), it is easy to miss. We often celebrate endurance as the ultimate virtue: the ability to withstand anything, to never break, to be invincible. But true perseverance is something else entirely.
I learned this distinction the hard way during SERE school, twenty years ago. The third day of prison camp broke something in me that I didn't even know could break.
I was watching a teammate get "hemmed up" in the working yard—singled out, harassed, pushed to his limit. Every fiber of my training told me to create a diversion, to draw their attention away from him. That's what a good officer does. That's what a future Green Beret does.
But I couldn't move.
I was too exhausted, too beaten down. I had nothing left. I had to "take a play off," and the shame was immediate and crushing. Was I really cut out for this? Was I actually the leader I thought I was?
A few days later, during our debrief, one of the cadre tried to put my mind at ease by highlighting the reality of SERE. My feelings, she explained, were exactly what the training was designed to produce. The point of SERE isn't to prove you can endure anything, that you won’t break, it's to show that at some point, you WILL break. Everyone does. What you learn at SERE isn't whether or not you'll break, but why it will happen and HOW to handle yourself when you do.
That conversation reshaped everything I thought I knew about strength, leadership, and perseverance. And here are the four lessons that have guided me ever since:
1. Insulate, Don't Isolate
When someone makes a catastrophic mistake or hits their breaking point, the instinct is often to give them space, or worse, push them away. But perseverance isn't a solo sport. Sometimes you need to literally put your arms around someone and create a protective barrier between them and the storm. We get through the hardest moments together, not apart.
2. Look for Small Victories
When everything is falling apart, we need to shrink the world down to what we can control. Small wins are always within reach. It may be a small sale or just one positive conversation, but these tiny victories become the traction to keep moving forward, and that eventually becomes momentum.
3. Extend the Time Horizon
In our worst moments, it feels like the current misery is permanent. But the mission is always greater than the moment. Perseverance requires lifting your eyes beyond the immediate suffering to see the larger arc. It is so important to maintain the belief that you will ultimately prevail, not because you're invincible, but because you're committed to something bigger than your current discomfort.
4. Lose the Ego
This is the hardest lesson and the most important one. Early in SERE, dropping your ego means resisting the urge to fight back immediately, which is the default setting for soldiers. You quickly learn to be strategic rather than reactive. But by the end, dropping your ego means something far more difficult: letting go of your indomitable identity and the belief that you're supposed to be unbreakable.
Your ego wants you to believe you can endure anything indefinitely. You can’t. True strength isn't about never breaking, it's about breaking well, learning from it, and staying in the fight.
The paradox of perseverance is that it often begins with accepting your own limitations. Once you stop trying to be invincible, you can start building something much more valuable: true resilience. The kind that acknowledges failure as information, not identity.
Twenty years later, I still think about that moment in the prison yard. I no longer feel ashamed, I do feel grateful. It taught me that leadership isn't about being the person who never needs help. It's about being the person who knows when to ask for it, when to give it, and how to keep moving forward even when you're running on empty.
That's perseverance. And it's far more powerful than any myth of endless endurance could ever be.
