The Power of Persistence: Why Lasting Change Takes Years, Not Weeks

The most important thing to understand about social change before you start is that it's slow. That single fact ends more advocacy campaigns than any opposition ever does. When we began our disability representation work in Hollywood, there was no realistic expectation of quick results. The industry had run on the same casting assumptions for decades, the disability community had little visibility in mainstream culture, and the people making the decisions had no obvious reason to change.

What produced change over the following decade wasn't a breakthrough moment. It was the accumulated weight of published research, sustained media attention, named studios, and relationships built one conversation at a time. This article is about why persistence isn't just a virtue in activism but the single most determinative factor in whether a campaign produces lasting change or just a moment of visibility, and, more to the point, how advocates actually sustain themselves through the long stretches when progress feels invisible.

Key Takeaways

• Persistence isn't a personality trait that some advocates are born with. It's an organizational and strategic discipline that can be built and maintained.
• Every significant social change was produced by advocates who kept going past the point where most people would have stopped.
• The middle of a campaign, between the initial momentum and the eventual win, is where most efforts collapse, not from lost urgency but from infrastructure that was never built.
• Personal connection to the cause is the deepest source of persistence, and it sustains advocates longer than professional obligation ever can.
• Celebrating incremental progress is a strategic requirement, not a motivational nicety. It's what keeps a campaign moving through the slow years.

What Persistence Actually Looks Like

When I was a teenager, my father gave me a Calvin Coolidge quote that I taped to my bedroom wall, next to my prized John Glenn autograph. It read: "Nothing in this world can take the place of persistence. Talent will not; nothing is more common than unsuccessful men with talent. Genius will not; unrewarded genius is almost a proverb. Education will not; the world is full of educated derelicts. Persistence and determination alone are omnipotent." I didn't fully understand it then. I do now. It isn't motivational fluff. It's an accurate description of what advocacy work actually rewards.

Persistence in advocacy isn't simply continuing to believe in a cause when progress is slow. It's the specific discipline of maintaining strategic focus, continuing to build relationships, sustaining media engagement, and showing up for direct conversations with decision-makers during the periods when nothing visible is happening. 

In our Hollywood work, that meant continuing to publish research, continuing to name specific productions, and continuing to engage studios even when the early response was defensive or dismissive, treating each small sign of movement as evidence that the strategy was working rather than a reason to declare victory and leave. The model is someone like John Lewis, who spent sixty years working inch by inch and never mistook a slow stretch for a dead end.

Why Change Takes So Much Longer Than You Expect

The gap between the timeline advocates expect and the timeline systemic change actually requires is one of the most consistent causes of burnout and collapse in this work. That gap isn't random. It reflects how institutions actually change, and understanding it makes the slowness easier to bear.

Institutions are built to resist rapid change because stability is what makes them function. Decision-makers face costs for change that are immediate and concrete, while the costs of maintaining the status quo are diffuse and deferred. And cultural change, the shift in public understanding that makes policy change both possible and durable, usually precedes the policy by years. When you understand that you're working against the natural inertia of institutions, slow progress stops feeling like failure and starts looking like the normal shape of the work.

How Advocates Sustain Themselves Through the Slow Periods

This is the part nobody tells you about, and it's the part that matters most. The middle of a campaign, after the launch energy fades and before any win arrives, is where the real test is. Here's what I've learned about getting through it.

Anchor to a Personal Reason, Not External Validation

The deepest source of persistence is a connection to the cause that doesn't depend on visible progress or applause. I think of Gloria Feldt, the former president of Planned Parenthood, who I had the honor of interviewing on the podcast. Over decades of advocacy, she faced death threats, stalking, and harassment. What kept her going wasn't the absence of cost. It was that nearly every da,y someone would tell her that her work had saved their life. 

"That reward," she said, "far exceeds any of the difficulties." If your reason to keep going lives inside you and the people you serve, it can outlast almost anything. If it depends on external validation, the slow periods will starve it.

Build a Community, Not Just a Campaign

Treating advocacy as purely transactional is a fast route to burnout. The advocates who last build genuine human connection into the work: people who provide support, share the load, and remind each other why it matters when any one person is depleted. The work is hard enough that it shouldn't be carried alone.

Celebrate Partial Wins on Purpose

Give the same organizational attention to progress that you give to setbacks. This isn't a feel-good exercise. The ability to recognize and mark a partial victory is what sustains commitment through the next slow stretch, and what reminds everyone that the theory of change is working.

Learn to Absorb Setbacks Without Quitting

I often think about Chrissy Beckles and the Sato Project. When Hurricane Maria devastated Puerto Rico in 2017, she lost years of progress rescuing abandoned dogs, along with her home and nearly everything she owned. She described picking herself back up not as an act of extraordinary willpower but as the only available response, because the dogs on that beach were still there. As a boxer, she knows you can't win every round. The point is to keep going.

Persistence Is Organizational, Not Just Personal

The most common misunderstanding about persistence is that it's a matter of individual willpower. The campaigns I've watched collapse in their middle phase were rarely led by people who stopped caring. They were led by people who never built the infrastructure that would let the work continue when key individuals were depleted, funding got inconsistent, or the strategy needed to adapt.

Organizational persistence has specific dimensions. Distributed leadership, so the campaign continues and adapts when individual leaders burn out or move on. Financial models that don't depend on peaks of attention to fund the quieter, sustained work. Explicit processes for bringing in new advocates and developing them, rather than relying on a fixed founding team forever. And regular practices, team meetings, shared assessment, structured celebration, that build a culture of sustained commitment instead of episodic intensity. Willpower is finite. Infrastructure renews itself.

How Persistence Changes the Game Over Time

Here's the most encouraging thing I've learned. Sustained pressure doesn't just wear down resistance. Over time, it changes the entire posture of the people you're trying to move.

For years, we called out studios and productions that undermined authentic representation, and we drew real criticism for it. We were comfortable with that. But something shifted as the persistence accumulated. Decision-makers who once would have waited to be criticized began reaching out to engage before they became the subject of it. 

The clearest example: when Dwayne Johnson was preparing to play an amputee in the film Skyscraper, he and Universal Studios entered into direct dialogue with us, and Johnson ultimately joined the foundation in a public call for disability inclusion in Hollywood, urging the industry to audition and cast actors with disabilities. That's what persistence does at scale. It doesn't just win individual fights. It changes the culture around the issue, until engagement becomes the default rather than the exception.

Persistence Without Strategy Is Just Stubbornness

One important caution. Persistence is the most important quality in long-term advocacy, but applying it to a strategy that isn't working produces a campaign that lasts a long time without producing change, rather than one that lasts long enough to do so.

The distinction is this: persistence is staying committed to the goal through slow periods while continuing to learn and adapt. Stubbornness is doing the same things the same way, regardless of the evidence. The most common version of this mistake is defining persistence as pushing the same channel forever, even after it stops producing results. 

Our own transition in Hollywood, from external critic to active ally with the studios we'd publicly challenged, was an act of strategic adaptation. The evidence told us the pressure phase had produced what it could, and that a different kind of engagement would now produce more. We stayed committed to the goal. We changed the method.

Final Thoughts

Every advocate I've interviewed on the All About Change podcast who produced lasting change shared one quality. They stayed in the work past the point where most people would have stopped. Not because they were exceptional, but because their connection to the cause was personal enough and their organizational infrastructure strong enough to outlast the inevitable frustration, setbacks, and slow progress.

That Coolidge quote from my bedroom wall has held up across my whole career: persistence and determination alone are omnipotent. It isn't a guarantee of results on any particular timeline. But it's an honest description of what separates the advocates who eventually change systems from those who generate visibility and change nothing. 

If you want to go deeper, you can read about the foundation's mission and my story, explore the foundation's ongoing work, and find more on effective activism and inclusion.

FAQs

Why does social change take so long?

Because institutions are built to resist rapid change, decision-makers face immediate costs for changing while the costs of the status quo are deferred, and the cultural shift that makes policy durable usually has to come first. The slowness is structural, not a sign that your advocacy is failing.

How do activists stay motivated during slow periods?

By anchoring to a personal reason that doesn't depend on visible progress, building a supportive community within the work, deliberately celebrating partial wins, and developing the capacity to absorb setbacks without treating them as proof that the cause is lost. Motivation that relies on constant visible progress won't survive the middle of a campaign.

What is the difference between persistence and stubbornness in advocacy?

Persistence is staying committed to the goal through slow periods while continuing to learn and adapt your methods. Stubbornness is repeating the same approach regardless of the evidence. The first changes systems over time. The second produces long campaigns that never get anywhere.

How do you celebrate incremental progress in a long-term campaign?

Treat partial wins with the same organizational attention you give setbacks: name them, mark them, and use them as evidence that the strategy is working. A first studio commitment isn't the systemic change you're after, but it creates a new baseline, builds momentum, and makes the next ask easier.

What organizational structures support long-term persistence?

Distributed leadership so the work doesn't depend on a few people, financial models that fund the quiet periods and not just the peaks, processes for recruiting and developing new advocates, and regular practices of assessment and celebration. These let a campaign outlast the depletion of any individual.

Can persistence alone produce social change without strategy?

No. Persistence applied to a strategy that isn't working just produces a long campaign that fails slowly. Persistence must be paired with a sound theory of change and a willingness to adapt the method based on evidence, while remaining committed to the goal.