Talented people sometimes turn into fragile flowers. They shrivel and fade when things get tough – because they’ve gotten by so easily in life, they’ve never had to learn how to work like the rest of us. They naturally think they are better – special. When reality catches up to them, it’s a real shock. Some never recover.
When it takes you longer to learn something, it sticks with you longer. Once you master it, you certainly aren’t going to take it for granted. You use it over and over, and you wind up passing others who earlier had run off and left you. The difference is that when you pass them, they never catch up again.
One of the greatest underdog stories of all time is the 1980 US Men’s Hockey Team, comprise of amateurs and college athletes. Their amazing win over the Soviet Union is known as the “Miracle on Ice.”
Weaknesses work the same way – they turn out to be an advantage.
In Chapter 5 How Million Dollar Earner Bill Orender Found His Way to the Top, Bill shares some of his insights on overcoming weakness and how they can drive you to greatness.
Here’s an excerpt:
All winners have weaknesses that they have overcome. As Art Williams used to say, there’s something about being an underdog. There’s something about not having success come easy in your life.
In his book “Success Is Not an Accident”, Tommy Newburgh talks about the curse of early success where people experience success very fast and very early in their lives. They breeze through grade school, breeze through high school, then breeze through college. When they get out of college they don’t know how to succeed because they’ve never had to try. Everything has always come so naturally and easily to them.
I’ve seen many kids who are super strong academically but when they get thrown into the real world they don’t know how to perform. This is because the world does not function like an academic institution.
We are all works in progress. That’s the good news. We’re all constantly in training, trying to do better and get better. And the people who understand this are able to maintain their success over a long period of time. They are successful because they understand that nothing good comes easily. Nothing great comes quickly.
