Success Comes From Doing The Little Things Over A Long Period Of Time

Today I heard “The Stonecutter’s Creedo” for the first time. It was written by Jacob Riis:

“When nothing seems to help, I go and look at a stonecutter hammering away at his rock perhaps a hundred times without as much as a crack showing in it. Yet at the hundred and first blow it will split in two, and I know it was not that blow that did it, but all that had gone before.”

I love this Stonecutter’s Creedo! I love it because it’s such a great reminder that even though we can’t always see the results of our daily efforts we are putting in to something, our efforts and those habits we form really are having an impact and they really are leading us to an amazing outcome.

Day to day we don’t often see any great outcomes from the little things we are doing, which is why it becomes so easy to get discouraged and frustrated. It becomes easy to convince ourselves we should stop doing them by telling ourselves that these little things aren’t making a difference and they just aren’t worth our time and effort to continue…

The little things we are consistently doing…those habits we form…they truly are having an impact. In fact, they are the very things that are leading us to our greatest successes. So even when it feels you cannot see the impact of each effort as you make over days, weeks, months, or even years, remind yourself that every effort you make on a consistent basis, over time, is contributing to cracking your stone and is getting you one step closer to where you want to be.

~Amy Rees Anderson

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