When we are in business for ourselves, determination and staying power are highly crucial for our success. We can all take some lessons from Ted Kennedy.

Senator Edward M. Kennedy, the last existing brother in an enduring political dynasty and one of the most influential senators in history, died Tuesday night at his home after a yearlong fight with brain cancer. He was 77. In nearly fifty years in the Senate, Kennedy, a liberal Democrat from Massachusetts, served beside ten presidents, his brother John Fitzgerald Kennedy among them, compiling an impressive list of legislative accomplishments on health care, civil rights, education, immigration and more.

Kennedy was sworn in to the Senate on November 7, 1962. In November 22, 1963, while presiding over the Senate an aide hurried in to tell him that his brother, President John F. Kennedy, had been shot; his brother Robert shortly told him that the president was deceased. Yet he was determined.

On June 19, 1964, Kennedy was a passenger in a private Aero Commander 680 from Washington to Massachusetts that went down on final approach into an apple orchard in inclemency, in the western Massachusetts town of Southampton. The pilot and Edward Moss, one of Kennedy’s aides, were killed. Kennedy was extracted from the wreckage by associate Senator Birch E. Bayh II and spent months in a hospital recovering from a serious back injury, a deflated lung, broken ribs and internal bleeding. He endured chronic back pain from the landing for the rest of his life. Yet he was determined.

Ted was in San Francisco as his brother won the critical California primary on June 4, 1968; after midnight, Robert was shot in Los Angeles and died a day later. Yet he was determined.
On May 17, 2008, Kennedy had a seizure, and then another one as he was raced from the Kennedy Compound to Cape Cod Hospital and then by helicopter to Massachusetts General Hospital in Boston. On May 20, doctors announced that Kennedy had a malignant glioma, a type of cancerous brain tumor. The grim diagnosis brought responses of shock and prayer from many senators of both parties and from President Bush.

Doctors at first told Kennedy the tumor was inoperable, but he looked around for other opinions and decided on the most aggressive and consuming course of treatment conceivable. He was determined.

Kennedy died of brain cancer on Tuesday, August 25, 2009, at his home in Hyannis Port, two weeks after the death of his sister Eunice.

Creating lasting motivational drive and determination is a vital key to opening that door to success. Because there’s lack of an immediate financial reward, we’re often discouraged early on in our efforts to keep a strong push towards our dreams of success. The ability to maintain a consistent and powerful push will be the elemental factor in determining whether or not you succeed. If you are able to develop that, then the only question of success is how much of it do you want to accomplish.

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