Self Discipline: Being Persistent

Dear Samarth,
I want to talk about self discipline and importance of being persistent in this mail. Often we want to achieve something, like learning biking, music, swimming etc. Learning some new thing is not easy. It takes time and can be challenging.  Persistence is the ability to maintain action regardless of your feelings. You press on even when you feel like quitting.

When you work on a long term goal, your motivation will wax and wane like waves hitting the shore. Sometimes you'll feel motivated; sometimes you won't. But it's not your motivation that will produce results — it's your action. Persistence allows you to keep taking action even when you don't feel motivated to do so, and therefore you keep accumulating results.

Some people are innately smarter, but it helps them get ahead in life not because they are smart but because they make smarter choice of being persistent and working diligently towards achieving their goals. It took a lot of time and effort for Oliver and Wilbur Wright brothers to build their first air-plane. It took lots of time and several failed experiments before Thomas Edition, the magician of light, to build the first light bulb. Great achievements come only with hard and persistent work. 

Bhagawat Gita tells us that work is worship. When you work on something towards achieving a specific goal, you should work diligently and put in your best effort. When you ingrain discipline of being persistent, you will feel satisfied and discover true happiness in your achievements. So, set up your goals and arise, awake and stop not till your goal is reached. 

Love 

Papa

 

How do we know if the Earth is round?

Long long time ago, people thought that the Earth is flat. If you kept walking you will eventually reach the end off the world from where you can just fall off.

The first thing people needed to learn was that the Earth is spherical. Here's how we can deduce that Earth is spherical:

1. During a lunar eclipse we can see that the shadow cast by Earth on the Moon is a portion of a disk. This tells us that the Earth is round, but still some can have a doubt whether it is circular like a disk or spherical like a ball. Both the disk and sphere can have shadow like a disk. So how do we know that it is not circular like a disk but rather a sphere like a ball?

Semi-circular shadow of Earth on the Moon during the phases of a lunar eclipse

Only a sphere casts a circular shadow in every direction, whereas a circular disk casts an elliptical shadow in all directions apart from directly above and directly below.

2. The sailors found that when a ship is sailing away the first thing that disappears is the lower portions of the ship while the mast is still visible.  This could only happen if the earth was spherical. See the picture below:

When a ship is at the horizon, its lower part is obscured due to the sphericity of the Earth.

Still the dispute was not settled for a long time because people didn't know how it is possible to keep the ocean in a curved shape. Of course we now know that is is because of gravity. But back then people didn't know.

Once we found out that the Earth is sphere, someone needed to measure this size of the Earth. Well the Earth is so big how can we measure it's size?

You know who was the first person to measure the size of the Earth? It was Erathosthenes. In next email, I will tell you about how he measured the size of the Earth.