kestrel

kestrel
2020-04-27 07:21:29 (UTC)

Making Life a Masterpiece

Last year, I subscribed to a video series called "The Academy of Ideas." It's tremendous, and I recommend everyone check it out, as even the no-cost videos they produce hold useful nuggets of wisdom. In their most recent subscriber video, they discuss methods of maintaining consistency and perseverance through difficult times and resistance in attaining one's goals.

The final quote they include, which is from someone named Orison Swett Marden (I'll have to look up this person), it lays bare the abilities of people to persist. Marden proposed a thought experiment. In it, he offered one million dollars to you if you could continue the same positive habit for the next 180 days. There was no required threshold of productivity or results, except that you had to continue on the routine every day for six months. Could you do it? As this is only a hypothetical question, this reward doesn't exist, but most people answer that they would. Marden's thoughts on this phenomenon:

“Perhaps [the financial reward], in that particular form [is lacking], but there is something better. . .It is infinitely better for you to make your life a masterpiece. . .Making your life a masterpiece means everything to you because it affects your ultimate destiny. You do not know that you will ever have another chance like the present. The great clock of time ticks off every day forever, and these days will never return.. . .Why not make up your mind, beginning with this moment, that you will make everything you touch, everything you take up, everything you put your hand to count? Why not resolve that you will make this year of your life mean more than any year of the past.”
--Orison Swett Marden, Making Life a Masterpiece




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