4. The Power Of Habits

It was told that ages ago in china, there lived a very smart and brave soldier who was very well-known for his expertise in archery. One day he had a plan to show his ability and thus he ordered 100 arrows to be prepared together with all the necessary equipments. After all things set up he walked into the arena with such a high self confidence. The target board was placed and after taking his position he started to shoot onto the target, again and again, none of his arrows ever missed the target. Everyone in the field was cheering and giving him big thumps up.

Remarkable!!!, 100 arrows released. 100 arrows hit the target. With such a glowing face and full of pride the soldier said, "People...look at your soldier here. At this moment, my archery skill is the best all over the country. I don't believe anyone can beat me at this. What do you all think..." everyone just cheered upon hearing this, "Marvelous...!!!Marvelous..!!!" However, among all the roaring and cheer, an old man appeared and shouted out loud, "You are indeed remarkable! However, your mastery is just the result of and endlessly repeated small actions!"
The field was silent. All eyes and attention were directed to this old man. This old oil-selling man knew that his comment brought up unfriendly air, "Hold on a second..."he said, and then he raised from his seat, took an old coin that had a hole in the middle, a bottle and put the coin above the bottle. The next thing, with all confidence he started to fill the bottle through that small little hole in that coin. He keep on doing it. And not long after, the bottle was fully filled. The amazing part was that there was no any drop of the oil whatsoever touched the coin. Oil was perfectly poured into the bottle through that single small hole. The soldier and everyone present were really amazed and then roared heavily, "Remarkable...Remarkable...Remarkable...!"
Low heartedly, the old man just bowed his head and paid his respect to soldier saying, "Repeated actions create mastery". The soldier finally understood the point and in return bowed his head in respect to the old man.
From the story above, we can take one very meaningful lesson; habit is power. That means, the more diligently we do something, the more often we repeated an action, our mastery and ability towards that specific action are to be perfected. If we turn that into habit, and along the process we have the effort to enchance quality of the performance, we can be sure that our skill will also be perfected. At the end, things which look difficult in the beginning because we are not used to doing it, finally will become something easy and sometimes ever turn out to work automatically. Others who are not used to doing it will think that this kind of mastery results from repeated habits is something special.
In term of improving our selves, we need what we call 'Success Character'. And this kind of character can only be achieved through positive habits such as : positive thinking, enthusuasm, optimism, dicipline, responsibility, etc. Which are maintained from time to time and improved continiously.
Let's make sure to keep on practicing, maintaining, and constructively developing our positive success habits and acting accordingly, so that our success character will drive us to our glorious victory of life.