Image: Mr Efthimios Kalevras (in memoriam), one of Greece's greatest sculptors, who honoured us so much with his friendship and example.
When an actor decorates hundreds of pages.
When a writer types thousands of words for his books.
When a sculptor spends hours carving his art.
When a painter devotes years to his painting.
When a scientist spends 14 hours every day in a lab measuring and doing tests.
A dentist spends 12 hours a day meticulously dedicated to carving millimetres into our teeth.
A lawyer who reads hundreds of pages of files.
A student who devotes countless hours to books.
A programmer who spends nights trying to put together a working code.
A religious man who dwells on a lifetime for the holy scriptures.
Everyone has repetitive actions. They often catch themselves in a permanent boredom of doing the same thing, years on end.
An athlete, celebrating a medal on the Olympic podium, there in a few seconds receives the honours, the taste and the ecstasy of winning a victory after years of solitary dedication to training.
Repetitive actions.
They are the putty and mortar that will forge your patience and bring about the much desired achievements.
When you find yourself doing something very tedious, something that apparently does not bring immediate results, something that seems to be bringing no progress, something unexciting, boring, monotonous, tasteless, without salt and that you feel like giving up all the time, but you persist, know that you are paving the way to your conquests.
"Genius is 1% inspiration and 99% perspiration." - Thomas Edison
"Genius is a talent who does all his homework." - Thomas Edison (also)
We are dealing here with personal excellence.
Persistence is its ingredient. Progress does not come in a straight line but in waves and is full of obstacles.
Persistence is one of the most precious qualities to be developed.
In a world where the vast majority give up and die on the beach, those who are persistent get ahead of the others who give in halfway through the process because of laziness, secondary interests, comfort zone, fear, dispersion and everything else that makes people give up on moving forward with their goals.
It's not easy, but it's in that discomfort zone that things happen.
When it comes to personal development, persistence is the number one quality that makes a person succeed in overcoming their limitations and developing skills.
Persistence + discipline + modesty = valuable achievement
What will you conquer? The knowledge of yourself.
Along the way you will come up against your own limits and you will know that, in reality, they are in your head, just like so many other barriers we impose on ourselves.
You knock down the internal obstacles one by one, until you realise that you are indeed capable of overcoming yourself.
The repetitive actions, the very ones that you catch yourself questioning all the time - "am I supposed to be here now doing this?" - will bring you closer to yourself on the path of self-knowledge.
You will look at his work and have immense happiness when you come across his legacy.
Because in every drop of paint on the board of your life, you will have for all eternity, even when it turns to dust, a piece of yourself, your energy and your contribution to the whole.
