I spoke at Texas A & M University Corpus Christi earlier this week about Greatness in You. The aim was to give students the confidence to know they can achieve extraordinary results and to help them develop the right mindset to make goals happen.
After the presentation, one student shared this feedback: “It helped me learn that to be great in the field I want to go into, I have to stick with it. That is hard for me.”
I appreciate this student’s honesty. I think his challenge is one a lot of people face. Like him, many people have a hard time sticking to tasks, so they give up on their hopes, goals, dreams and aspirations. But the key to success is hanging in there. It’s not about how talented you are or how smart. It’s about how committed.
I spoke about something called the Rule of 10 to illustrate the point that real success takes a true commitment to the task at hand. The Rule of 10 says that it takes about 10 years of doing something to become top-level. And often that ten-year rule is a minimum. For some fields, it can take 20 or 30 years. When we look at it that way, we realize greatness isn’t as much about talent as it is about time. And most folks don’t want to invest the time.
Michael Phelps didn’t win eight gold medals in the 2008 Olympics because he was a born swimmer. He won because he put in the time, hour after hour, day after day, swimming the same drills over and over again. He started swimming at age 7. At age 23, he was labeled the greatest Olympian.
Tiger Woods started playing around with golf clubs before he was 2. Sixteen years later, he became the youngest person to win the amateur champioinship. Again, he didn’t become top-class because he was born knowing how to play golf. He became top-class because he put the time into it.
You don’t have to be the most talented to be great. You just have to be the one most willing to put in the time. Consider Jerry Rice, who was turned down by more than a dozen football teams, but because he kept working and putting in the time, he is now considered one of the best wide receivers ever to have played the game.
You may know some pretty talented people who never really lived up to their true potential. A big reason may be because they weren’t willing to put in the time to go from good to great.
Look at any of your favorite athletes, musicians, businessmen or others you admire. Chances are, you’ll see it wasn’t just talent that got them where they are. It was time.
So you’ve got to wrap your mind around your success. If you want to perform at a truly high level, you’ve got to be willing to stick to it.
Success isn’t just about talent. It’s about time. Can you do the time?
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