Would you pay someone to beat the crap out of you?
Though it’s a bit drastic, that might just be the right way of thinking to reach success.
Everyone has the potential to be great. Whether it is to be a great accountant or a great writer, everyone has something that he or she has the potential to do greatly. The problem is finding that specific “sweet-spot” where all your being intersects.
You can’t be great at something that you hate. You can be good at it, but not great. If you don’t have a passion for your job, you’re not going to strive to become better at it and you will continue to do it in the easiest manner possible.
You get better by living on the edge of your abilities. A landowner can’t expand his borders by remaining safely inside of them. He has to go to the edges and explore the parts he does not know about. Though it might be frightening and dangerous, it is the only way he can get more land.
Just the same, if you sit in the middle, the easy way, and never challenge your abilities, you can’t grow.
Especially in this age, living a comfortable life is pretty common. Having enough money to study a respectable course at university, getting a steady job via a family contact and then simmering until you die someday. You were comfortable and ended a fairly happy person. But did you achieve something? Were you great at something? Did you leave the world better than you found it?
Life is supposed to be hard. Just ask John from Brave New World. If everything is going easy, you’re stagnating. You’re not growing. Make a choice to increase the difficulty in your life instead of decreasing it. You can piddle away at some stories and a WIP novel for years and decide that you will eventually get it right, or you can increase your writing time and work harder on your novel, pounding away at the keys night after night until you get the characters just right and the plot flowing smoothly.
Creep over your borders and see what lies there. What you find there might surprise you.
Great point. You can't find out what's possible if you don't go beyond those borders.
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