It’s fair to say that most of us want what successful people have, and in a sense there is nothing wrong with this. The problem is that we’re just not prepared to pay the price they paid to achieve it.
One of Michelangelo’s greatest successes was his sculpture of David. He worked on it with such passion that he often slept in his clothes, resenting the time it took to take them off and put them on again. He repeatedly examined and measured the marble to see what pose it could accommodate. He made hundreds of sketches of possible attitudes, and detailed drawings from models. He tested his ideas in wax on a small scale, and only when he was satisfied did he pick up his chisel and mallet.
He approached the painting of the Sistine Chapel with the same intensity. Lying at uncomfortable angles on hard boards, breathing in the suffocating air just under the vault, (more…)
