Chipping Away At The Big Stuff

I've got a lot of respect for sculptors.  They look at a piece of rock -- perhaps marble -- and see something inside it waiting to become.  I have no idea how sculptors go about with hammer and chisel chipping away everything that wasn't what they saw inside the rock to begin with.  Here's the main quality of a sculptor -- patience.
That's the quality most of us lack when we try to sculpt our lives into something different -- something healthier or more productive.
The other day I was talking to a woman stunned to discover that she weighed over three hundred pounds.  She couldn't imagine how she had achieved that weight and was anxious to shed it -- immediately.  When asked how many years she had spent gaining the weight, she replied over seven.  And yet she could not imagine chipping away the weight ounce by ounce until she had achieved her goal.
We are so eager for success that we forget the sculptor's patience.
Consider Michelangelo's works if he had used dynamite instead of the delicate tools of the sculptor.  No one would expect anything from such a plan except debris.  And yet everyday we dynamite our own personal goals instead of patiently chipping away at the big stuff.  Here's to patience and success.  Go for it.