It Takes A Lifetime

 Happy Friday, Friends!

I hope and trust this post finds you all having a great day as a glorious new opportunity begins to dawn in my Sweet Home Alabama! This one is going to be a great one…I can just feel it! 😊

This week I simply want to offer a big dose of encouragement…

What is your purpose? What is your passion? What is the thing you love to do? What makes your heart happy when doing it? What is your vocation? Hopefully you are able to express through your vocation your purpose and passion, the thing you love to do and that makes you happy…that would be absolutely awesome! 😊

I want to encourage you this morning to keep showing up and keep working on whatever it is that sets your soul on fire. By our nature, and in our instant gratification society, we want to be experts at whatever it is we do right away however this is not how life works. While we might have a natural bent towards a certain skill, while we might have great potential, our gifts and skills are only fully developed through consistent effort and growth. And the saddest thing of all? The failure to fulfill the potential that resides within! I might not know you personally however I know that there is greatness within you. The only thing that must be decided, the thing we will all decide, is whether or not we will pursue it.

I want to share 3 quotes with you…

“I trained 4 years to run only 9 seconds. There are people who do not see results in 2 months, give up, and leave. Sometimes failure is sought by oneself.” – Usain Bolt

“If people knew how hard I had to work to gain my mastery, it would not seem so wonderful at all.” – Michelangelo

“It took me a lifetime.” – Picasso

Powerful, isn’t it? They accomplished greatness and many want the success they achieved however few, very few, are willing to pay the price they had to pay to attain it. Profound…

A 1993 study of accomplished violinists found that they had spent an average of 10,000 hours practicing by the age of 20. This led to the popular belief that it takes 10,000 hours to master something. However, a world-renowned expert on peak performance, Anders Ericsson, points out a couple of flaws with the 10,000-hour rule:

1. While the students were very good violinists, they were not masters. He suggested that it sometimes takes 20,000 to 25,000 hours to truly become experts or masters of a subject or skill. It takes a lifetime…
2. Not all skills are the same…some take more than 10,000 hours and some take less.

And here is a critically important component of becoming an expert or achieving mastery (taken from How Hard Is It to Become an Expert? by Kendra Cherry. The article was written on October 24, 2020. You can find the full article at verywellmind.com):

“Just putting in 10,000 hours rehearsing the same thing over and over again is not enough to become a true expert. Instead, concentrated, goal-directed, deliberate practice that stretches your abilities beyond your comfort zone is what you should pursue if you want to gain expertise in any area.”

Michelangelo’s quote starts making more sense, doesn’t it?! 😊 Concentrated…goal-directed…deliberate…stretches your abilities beyond your comfort zone...not for the weak of heart!

So I simply want to encourage you this morning, Sweet Friends; whatever it is that makes you feel fully alive, please pursue that every day of your life. Concentrate, establish your goals, and challenge yourself every day to go beyond your comfort zone. Like so many other things in life, this is not an event but a process. It is the journey in becoming all that you were created to become that the real meaning and significance of life is found.

Please don’t hesitate to contact me if there is ever anything I can do for you or your family. I will always help you any way I can. You can reach me at kevin@whatwillyourinfluencebe.com.

Have a great day, a wonderful weekend, please cherish your precious families, and please stay well! 😊

Kev