Champions do not become champions when they win an event, but in the hours, weeks, and months and years they spend preparing for it. The victorious performance itself is merely a demonstration of their championship character. -Michael Jordan
We need a reality check.....doing just enough to get by is not enough to get ahead. It is a fact and one we all have to come to grips with in our life or we can ignore it and remain where we are. Many have hopes and dreams of great things but the tough, honest, unforgiving, Michael Jordan truth is, it doesn't happen by sitting around hoping....it turns out you actually have to do something and do it with excellence.
Ok but what about natural talent and ability you say? Scientific experts are producing remarkably consistent findings that talent doesn't mean intelligence, motivation or personality traits. It's an innate ability to do some specific activity especially well. British-based researchers Michael J. Howe, Jane W. Davidson and John A. Sluboda conclude in an extensive study, "The evidence we have surveyed ... does not support the notion excelling is a consequence of possessing innate gifts."
The first major conclusion of these studies is that nobody is great without work. It's nice to believe that if you find the field where you're naturally gifted, you'll be great from day one, but it doesn't happen. There's no evidence of high-level performance without experience or practice.
Reinforcing this "nothing is free" finding is vast evidence that even the most accomplished people need around ten years of hard work before becoming world-class, a pattern so well established researchers call it the ten-year rule. A different research but equally compelling is that author Malcolm Gladwell in his book Outliers discusses a phenomenon that he calls “The 10,000 Hour Rule.” Gladwell quotes neurologist Daniel Levitin, who says that scientific studies show that 10,000 hours are required to achieve the level of mastery associated with being a world-class expert — in anything.
So, here I am.... reminding myself ..... hard work is essential and .... hard. But It is so easy to get caught in the "I wish it were easier or why do I have to do the things I don't want to do" trap but the truth is if great performance were easy, it wouldn't be rare and everyone would be doing it.
The striking, liberating, and amazing news is greatness is not reserved for an ordained few and it also should be pointed out it is actually in our DNA, Genesis 1:27 tells us we are created in the image of God!
So be encouraged my friends, those hours you are putting in are not in vain and they will propel you to your next level of achieving all you can be if you don't give up.
It is not the critic who counts, not the man who points out how the strong man stumbles or where the doer of deeds could have done better. The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena, whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood, the man who strives valiantly. Far better it is to dare mighty things, to win glorious triumphs, even checkered by failure, than to take rank with those poor spirits who neither enjoy much nor suffer much, because they live in the gray twilight that knows not victory nor defeat. - Theodore Roosevelt, 26th President
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