Tuesday, July 26, 2022
Bill Gates spent countless hours alone, learning computer programming as a teenager, on one of the few supercomputers available in the 1970s. When he was very young, Warren Buffet spent hours all by himself in his local library, pouring over company profiles, and researching investing prospectuses. Thomas Edison spent hours and hours alone in his laboratory, trying 10,000 versions of the light bulb before he found the one that finally worked.
Stars are not born, they are created. Ideas are excavated slowly, often alone, and in the imagination’s workshop. For every second of perfected, performance-ready music, you have to spend countless hours practicing, trying, and repeating, so often all by yourself. Everyone loves the spotlight, but very few understand how stardom actually materializes. It begins slowly and with an audience of one.
You must love your own singing before another will join you; you must love your own writing before others will too; you have to love your own cooking before others will stop at your restaurant. Love your efforts. Love being alone, work-shopping, perfecting, and learning your craft. Your love and labor will eventually bring diners to your restaurant, listeners to your concert, readers to your blog, or donors to your cause. The universe never brings an audience the first time you give a concert! It withholds opportunity until it sees your commitment and your love of progress. It waits for you to believe in yourself first – to strengthen your passion. You’ve got to become your number-one fan, then eventually someone will take note, and they will become your number-two fan. It won’t be long before number three shows up and so on. Keep loving the work, perfecting the skills in the workshop, and sharing your gifts even if it’s just for yourself. Someone else will take note, eventually.