In the age of 10-minute grocery deliveries and instant internet, we have been programmed to believe that success should also be "instant." We want a thousand followers in a week, and we want to master our skills in a month. But look at the world around you. A forest takes decades to grow. A masterpiece takes years to paint. The most valuable things in life are on a slow-cooker, not a microwave. The Story: The Stonecutter’s Hammer Imagine a stonecutter hammering away at a huge rock. He hits it 100 times, and not even a tiny crack shows. To an outsider, it looks like he is failing. He is wasting his time. But on the 101st blow , the rock suddenly splits in two. Was it the last blow that did it? No. it was all those 100 blows that came before it. Each strike was weakening the internal structure of the stone, even though nothing was visible on the outside. That is how success works. Your "boring" daily work is the first 100 hits. The "success" the world see...
We live in a world that never sleeps. Our phones are constantly buzzing, our minds are always racing about the future, and we are surrounded by the "noise" of everyone else's opinions. In this chaos, we often lose the most important thing we own: Our Peace. Peace isn't the absence of trouble; it's the presence of a calm heart in the middle of a storm. The Story: The King and the Two Paintings: Once, a King offered a prize to the artist who could paint the best picture of Peace. Many artists tried. The King looked at all the pictures, but there were only two he really liked. The First Painting: A calm lake. The water was like a perfect mirror, reflecting the beautiful green mountains and blue sky. Everyone who saw it thought, "This is the perfect picture of peace." The Second Painting: This one had mountains, too, but they were rugged and bare. Above was an angry sky with rain and lightning. Down the side of the mountain tumbled a foaming waterfall. ...