How to build a Masterpiece - Perseverance and Time

Me and Queenie in front of Notre Dame

Progress can feel slow at times or non-existent when you are working on building a business, learning a new skill or creating a community. However, if you change your perspective you'll be able to see how perseverance over time is going to lead you to creating your own masterpiece like the Notre Dame.


This year I had the opportunity to see the Notre Dame in person and it was as grand as my imagination had made it out to be. I knew of the Notre Dame through Disney movies like the hunchback of Notre Dame and the cartoon gargoyles growing up as a kid. Watching those shows I always imagined that this ancient grand cathedral was constructed ages ago in the past. 

However, I was wrong...

Wandering to the back of the Notre Dame where they had displays showcasing its history, I learned that it began construction in 1160 and is still a work in progress. This huge amazing majestic building I'm looking at is the accumulation of sustained work and effort over hundreds of years. Through years of perseverance you just may be able to create your own master piece in life like the Notre Dame. You just need to keep persevering.

The interior of Notre Dame

This is especially the case if you are working on creating something new with no hand book or manual to guide you step by step. It can be tough seeing progress within the day to day and week by week work. In fact you can find yourself losing sight of how you are achieving the vision dealing with the unexpected challenges and problems.

Looking back to my time as a part of the Self-Employment Entrepreneur Development Society(SEEDS) as we worked towards realizing our vision of creating an entrepreneurial community within Surrey, it was tough seeing how our efforts were helping realize the vision we had. We developed an initial plan for how we were going to do it but within a week had to go back to the drawing board to revise everything. The week following that revision we ran into more challenges and would need to revise it again. At the time each pivot with our plan felt like we were taking steps back instead of steps forward. However looking back to all of the things we did from the beginning to a year after you can now see the progress, the accumulation of all of our work. To see our own success we just needed to give it the secret ingredient ,"Time".

This is shared in common with my time helping Eli the community expert build NetSquared Vancouver. We did monthly events where 30 to 50 people would attend but it rarely went past 60 attendees unless it was on an exception topic. At times we would have far less people come than we expect as well. However, you can truly see the success of persevering and holding these monthly events over time. The perfect example of this is during the annual NetSquared Conference where the 200 seat room was filled with those 30 to 50 people who we had helped over the last year. 

It's tough evaluating progress on a daily or weekly basis. If you continue to persevere and give it time, over the years you'll be able to really see how far you've come. Don't stop and before you know it you'll have created a master piece like the Notre Dame. Keep it a work in progress.

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By Stevie Vu

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