Trifles Make Perfection…

A bystander observed Michelangelo as he took a long time retouching every detail of a statue he’d been working on for many days, and asked why he bothered with them. Michelangelo replied; “Trifles make perfection and perfection is no trifle.”
The greatest enemy of best is good. If you’re satisfied with what’s good, you’ll never have what’s best. (John Mason). The quickest and easiest way to become a high flyer is to do more and then more than is required and then to continue doing it.
One secret every true achiever knows is the power of going the extra mile with tasks. Zig Ziglar wrote; “The difference between ordinary and extraordinary is that little extra.” The ability to put in a little more hard work and a little more detail is the hallmark of excellence and life always rewards handsomely men who truly and dutifully do a little more than all others.
“If a man is called to be a streetsweeper, he should sweep streets even as Michelangelo painted, or Beethoven composed music, or Shakespeare wrote poetry. He should sweep streets so well that all the hosts of heaven and earth will pause to say, here lived a great Streetsweeper who did his job well.” (Martin Luther King, Jr.)
Thomas Edision said; “Show me a thoroughly satisfied man, and I will show you a failure.” “There are two kinds of men who never amount to very much,” remarked Cyrus H.K. Curtis to his associate, Edward Bok. “And what kinds are those?” inquired Bok. “Those who cannot do what they are told,” replied the famous publisher, “and those who can do nothing else.”
“Where we cannot invent, we may at least improve,” said Charles Caleb Colton. Find a better way and make that way better. That is the surefire lift to great achievements.
© Oluwafisayo Akinlolu, 2006.