Do you want to build a great relationship? It takes time, effort, energy, confrontations, and emotions.

Do you want to build a business? That requires a relentless pursuit of knowledge and growth over many years of work.

Do you want to get really healthy? You’ve got to hit the gym every day and eat healthy meals far more often than unhealthy ones—over a very long period of time.

When it comes to learning a skill, especially to mastery level, even if you have a natural talent, you’ve got to put in your hours. You’ve got to do the foundational work, the boring bits, so you can do the fancy bits later.

A lot of people tend to bail when things get tough, when the reward doesn’t come right away. They lose interest, go try something else, or give up entirely.

Or, they do the opposite: they put a huge investment into something that’s clearly not paying off at all—like someone trying to fix a broken relationship.

When you see that something has a good return on investment, even if it’s slight, you stick with it. Now, that return might not be immediate.

It might take a few dance classes before you get the rhythm.

It might take a few confrontations before your partner respects you.

You just have to know when you’re seeing evidence that it’s a good investment and then keep investing.

Whenever you hit a difficult point and things aren’t progressing as quickly as you’d like, stop.

Ask yourself: Is pursuing this aligned with my values? Is mastering this worth it in the long run?

To dive deeper into this topic, check out the original video here: