Persistence

Persistence is an appropriate topic, as I haven't touched this blog for a month or two. Buckling down and sticking with your ambitions is imperative for success. Without determined persistence you will forever have a vague ambition in your mind without ever realizing it. My greatest fear is dying without first leaving my mark on this world. I imagine those of you who see this will be able to relate to this fear. We die twice in this world, first when we stop breathing, second when we've been forgotten. I believe most would prefer to leave a lasting legacy, and persistence is the way to achieve that.

So how do we gain persistence? It's tough. Essentially, we must force ourselves to break the patterns of our past negligence. We must frame in our mind exactly what we wish to accomplish, then set out to accomplish it. There's a lot more to be said on figuring out exactly what you want to do, but that's a whole other topic. In order to be persistent, we must believe in what we are doing. We must know that the things we do are beneficial not just to ourselves but to some greater cause. We must build something that will last, something bigger than ourselves.

Now, obviously you can't go from smoking weed and masturbating every day straight to building the fucking Empire State Building. What can we do in between legacy ground zero and the achievement of our ambitions? First of all, we must cultivate a success environment. Eliminate the cancer of your laziness from your life. At all stages of your day, ask yourself if what you are doing is beneficial to your goals. If it is not, remove that thing from your life. Spend all hours of the day committed to working towards bettering yourself and achieving your goals. This advice seems vague; obviously we should always be doing things that are good as opposed to things that are not good. This is common sense, however most of us do not abide by this rule. I'm not advocating a complete abstinence from all entertainment, but I am suggesting that we replace as many non-productive activities as we can with other things that directly help us to achieve our ambition.

My personal goal in life is to be a writer. I don't know what drives you, but more than anything I want to establish myself as an author and a creator. Figure out what the thing is that you'd like to do with your life, then do things that are relevant to that. Read books, blogs, and guides relating to the subject you're interested in. Improve your skills not just in the area you are interested in, but also in all adjacent skill areas. If you want to be a mechanic, start working on cars. If you want to be a famous dancer, play some fucking music in your living room and jam it out. If you want to be a writer, WRITE SOMETHING! The key to persistently achieving what you care about is every single fucking day to do that thing.

Somebody said to the famous cellist Yo-yo Ma, "I'd give my life to play like you". He replied, "I did".

That's what it takes, gentlemen. It's hard. It's going to be harder than anything you've ever done to put yourself out there and to chase your dream. It doesn't matter what your dream is; if your dream is worth dreaming about it is not going to be easy. What I can tell you from experience though, is that the first step is the hardest. Get into the groove of bettering yourself and going after your ambition. You'll find yourself doing the things that used to seem like work just out of habit. You'll begin to enjoy jogging every day. You'll begin to feel idle if you aren't working on something. You'll develop this urge in your bones to go out there and do whatever it is that you care about. It's a good feeling gentlemen, and you can have it before too long. All your dreams are within your reach.