Find the angel within you
I am very grateful and grateful to my kind friend who has generously passed me one of his many inspiring books, “The Angel Within” by Chris Widener. It’s about Michelangelo’s secrets to following your passion and finding the job you love.
The book is simple, easy to read, but incredibly powerful. It serves as a guide to help readers discover their potential and live out their passion.
When I was a teenager, one of my fondest memories is a mini replica of Michelangelo’s David statue that my uncle gave me, who bought it in Florence, Italy.
Now that I have read “The Angel Within” I have gained a greater understanding and deep appreciation for Michelangelo’s masterpiece David as it has taught me incredible lessons on how to follow one’s passion and I feel compelled to summarize these lessons below.
The Angel Inside is about the dejected thirty-year-old American man, Tom Cook, who travels through Europe for three weeks, seeking to gain perspective and direction in his life. On the last day of his journey, a mysterious stranger takes Tom under his wing and teaches him “Michelangelo’s secrets to following your passion and the true meaning of achieving the life process and striving for inner greatness.”
1) Find the angel within you: No matter what others say, there is an angel within you waiting to be released. Each person has within him the capacity to be a king and a warrior, a person of value and a person of achievement.
2) The power to follow your passion: No matter what others think you should do or become, you should always follow your passion.
3) Have confidence in your strength: If you want to be successful, you have to find yourself confidence in the things you do well and then pursue them.
4) Beauty through the details: The masters, those who triumph enormously and set the standard for others, are the ones who master the details.
Most people do normal work. Some do above-average work. The teachers, the ones who triumph tremendously and set the standard for others, are the ones who master the details.
5) Your hand creates what your mind conceives: The secret is: let your mind conceive it and then let your hand create it. True achievement requires both
As David faces his Goliath, he conceives in his mind what he wants to do. See the giant dead at his feet and save his own army.
6) The importance of planning and preparation: the lesson is not to move too fast. Fast enough to get where you want to be, but slow enough to get it right the first time.
7) Every achievement begins with quick action: “Action is the beginning of achievement. Without it, you will only have wasted dreams and good intentions.”
8) Adopt the stages of chopping, sculpting, sanding and polishing: “We must follow the same progression: eliminating what does not belong, sculpting our lives and shaping them through the people we associate with and the information we receive., allow the rough spots in our lives to be cleared through adversity and suffering, and then, only then, will we be ready to be polished and let our power and beauty shine through. “
9) Be content: Sometimes success takes years: “Sometimes success takes years. It takes methodical action over time.”
10) No one starts with the Sistine Chapel: “Live your life and do your work in the embodiment of the excellent, and opportunities will flow your way. People cannot, will not, look away from excellence.”