Only bad things happen quickly. We’re fed a dream that good things – personal change, wealth, success – can happen quickly. When we identify an issue, something we’d like to work on and fix, we think that in identifying it we’ve solved it. We ignore the power of habit, and how insanely long it takes to create one, especially a good one. Whatever we want in life is dependant on our habits. So believing that we can become successful simply by knowing how to be successful is both ignorant and destructive. We may know the path, but we still have to walk it and walk it without straying from it.
Building has and always will be slower than destruction. We can destroy a life in seconds, with a single reaction or decision, but to build a good life, a great life, takes thousands upon thousands of hours of persistence and work, and again, it can be undone in seconds. This is just the way it is and the wish it weren’t so is to be lazy or cowardly and specifically destructively stupid.
If we believe in the quickness of success or victory in anything, we’re less likely to do the real work over a long time that both success and personal change requires. We won’t break our bad habits. We won’t create good ones. We won’t improve because we won’t wake up to how life works.
Good things take time and lots of effort – breaking bad habits, ridding addiction, becoming worthy of success. While bad things happen quickly. So, be on guard. Be willing to work and persist, not just for a week or a year but for as long as it takes and it may take a lifetime. Just don’t be so foolish to think that anything good happens quickly. It all must be earned.
