NickVenturella.com 7-3-17

Mastering patience and persistence

July 03, 2017

Recently my father-in-law retired from his dental practice. It was this past Thursday that he finished his last day of work. He is well-liked and revered by his patients, coworkers and fellow dental partners. In my opinion, he approached his 40 year career with patience. He knew it was a marathon, not a sprint. By continuing to learn and hone his craft everyday he became a great dentist. Maintaining a positive attitude and being kind is how he became others' preferred dentist and colleague.This got me thinking about taking the time to hone one's skills to become great at it, and realizing that it does, in fact, take time.We live in an age where we want success now -- instant gratification -- but these things don't happen overnight. We often want a shortcut that gets us right to the end result, foregoing the necessary time and effort to generate sustainable, quality results -- shortcuts only provide short term, limited or even fleeting gains. Being persistence and consistent is how the tortoise won the race.I read an article yesterday that provided an example of time and effort generating results illustrated by actor/comedian/musician Steve Martin's career. The example was that Martin worked to hone his craft relentlessly and over time surpassing peers in experience and expertise. He went on to win better roles than his peers, not necessarily because he was more talented but more experienced and professional, which can only come with consistent effort and time. Because Martin kept practicing his craft and stayed in the game when others spent their time trying to find shortcuts, or dropped out of the game altogether, he began to win more on a regular basis.If you have passion for something that will allow you motivation to obsessively work at that thing every day, week, month, year then one day you'll look back and have spent decades involved in your passion. Spending that amount of time and energy doing/practicing something, you're naturally going to get better at it and win more than you did when you started.Simply having the patience to have longevity in your craft will raise your game, expertise and experience to a point where you will rise above the many other shortcut seekers who have come and gone and are now forgotten or are a distant memory.As a musician myself I think about this:  I've been writing and performing music for 23 years at this point and I'm not even 40 years old yet. For over half my life I've been working on my craft. Maintaining a large focus on my creative passion has been a North Star to every good personal and professional experience in my life. Music just happens to be the biggest in my fleet of vessels navigating by that star.The main message here, is to be patient, be disciplined to progress everyday, and if you have a positive and persistent approach one day you can step back to truly marvel at how far you've come and how many others you've impacted just by honing your craft everyday.Have a great week!