I have yet to meet someone who achieves great success who has not worked hard. What we see in the media is the moment when it all came together for them, their success story.
What the story doesn’t always reveal are the long hours, the times of doubt, the burnout and the failed attempts that was the foundation of their final achievement. The unfortunate thing is that we often see the results as “an overnight success”. There may be a few of these phenomenon’s but for the majority of us it takes hard work.
In sport, they say that to become an Olympic athlete takes a minimum of 5000 hours to master a skill. This means that athletes know that training is part of the process to achieve success. This could explain why the Olympics is a 4 year goal.
What one needs to understand in step 1 is that the very act of working hard builds the momentum to accompany the next steps in the formula and that without hard work there can be no progression. The efforts are lost in sporadic attempts.
This translates to our careers through using our skills to become good, maybe even excellent. This initial step of consistent effort and volume of skill attainment does hold some weight in the age-old saying that “practice makes perfect”. Maybe they knew about the formula of success?
So set yourself up for mastery and success; be that person who takes the extra client, stays late, comes in early and works the weekend. Those actions solidify the currency and quality of the energy put into achieving success!
