Connecting your worlds.
Not because it doesn’t take years to attain success, mastery, virtuosity. It definitely does take years, often decades, to master your craft or attain your goals. That’s not why persistence is overrated.
Persistence is overrated because it implies a bending of the will to a singular purpose, a continual stream of sacrifices in the form of life energy and time devoted to achievement of a desired end state. From experience, I can authoritatively say that the road of persistence – bending your life, sacrificing things you like and love in order to attain something – can be a very difficult road.
Contrast the path of persistence with the path of love, which consists of doing that thing which you can’t help but do. In other words, align your life so that it enables you to do the few things that you really love to do.
It will still take you years, maybe decades, to master your chosen field. Reaching milestones will still only happen slowly, and virtuosity will still come only with time.
But the major, all-important difference is that if you’re doing something you love, it really doesn’t feel like effort. Hours fly by. You can spend entire days working on the things you love to work on, and rather than feeling tired and worn out at the end of the day, you feel a tinge of sorrow that the day has ended, and you have to stop doing what you so thoroughly enjoy doing.
From the outside, a person following the path of persistence (doing those things you have to do) and a person following the path of love (doing those things that you love to do) would look remarkably similar. Both individuals would spend countless hours engaged in their chosen activity. Both would encounter setbacks, achieve milestones, improve, grow proficient, become a master.
On the inside, however, the two individuals couldn’t be more different. The person on the path of persistence will certainly feel satisfaction at having attained worthwhile goals, but often feels as though those goals came at a very high price. The achievement of a Pyrrhic victory rarely leaves the victor in any state other than exhaustion and weariness.
The person following the path of enjoyment, or the path of love, will also have achieved many milestones, and will also have mastered her domain. She will have enjoyed many successes, and while attainment is satisfying, it is completely ancillary. For the person following the path of love, the joy is in the doing. The happiness is in the daily activity. The deep, spiritual joy is inherent in the mechanics of working on your passion.
On the path of love and enjoyment, the doing is its own reward. You don’t sacrifice your life energy, which is your most precious treasure. Rather, you spend your life energy, but spend it doing what refreshes, renews, and rejuvenates you. You don’t feel exhausted from your efforts; rather, you feel deep gratitude for giving yourself the gift of living a rich, meaningful, joyful, life.
Incidentally, this thing that you love to do, whatever it is, is your purpose and your calling at this moment in your life. Honor that movement within you, move your life in the direction it leads, and thoroughly enjoy each moment.
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