There were a couple comments in my last article that mentioned that people no longer realise how much work goes into being successful. And while I have talked about it a long time ago, I think it is salient to consider how the world has changed and what we see of success.
In the past, we used to have local success where even in small towns, there were small-town heroes who would excel at a sport, instrument, or business. They might not have gone on to make it to the majors, but even in the minors it was generally clear that they worked hard to be at their best. I remember a few hockey players (field hockey) who worked super hard in my little town, a couple them actually did go on to play for the state and Australia. For me, they were role models, even though a couple years older, and I also occasionally trained and played with them. They were good players, hard trainers.
But I wonder how common this is now for most people, where the role models are international stars, which means that they are already successful, have already made it. We no longer see much road to success these days, because we have replaced local entertainment with international celebrity. We don't see the hard yards put in, the hours spent in training and practice, the million failures, we just see the end product of all those years of work by the person who succeeds and all the people who supported them.
I suspect that this has an impact on how we ourselves approach our own workload, where perhaps we have too high expectations, and too low work ethic to actually succeed. And while it isn't about becoming some international superstar, I reckon it impacts on our day to day work ethic too-. Perhaps this is why so many people feel so entitled in the workplace that they expect all the perks, without doing much of the works.
I was watching the women's snowboarding halfpipe final tonight and a seventeen year old Korean girl too a massive fall on the first run. She looked like that was the end of her competition, but she came out again for the second run and dropped after a ginger attempt at her first hit. The commentary were amazed she even tried. But, she came back again for the third and final run, and absolutely laid it down, and took gold. In the space of twenty minutes or so, she went from zero to hero.
But that isn't her story, is it? Sure, that is great for the Olympic viewers, but this girl at only the age of seventeen, has already been practicing for most of her life, competing locally and then internationally, and has likely fallen thousands of time very hard - without anyone watching. She has probably picked herself up, bruised and battered, and then tried a trick again. And again. Her friends watching maybe, and then her coaches. But over and over, she has been in pain, and worked through it.
There are plenty of young people who are similar, but as a percentage of the whole, it is a very small, very visible group that make it to the top. However, most of us these days can't even get our ass to the gym a few times a week, let alone push morning, night and weekends in order to be great at something. And the thing is, many of us are being paid to do a job, and we still can't bring ourselves to improve at it, without expecting the employer to offer some course.
I think that being so far removed from seeing the work that goes into being successful is damaging our work ethic. Even when it comes to our parents, many of us never saw them actually do the work they were paid for, many maybe not fully realising what went into putting food on the table. And these days, if we did watch many people work, they are sitting behind a desk in an air-conditioned office, so it doesn't exactly scream work ethic. Yet, even in great conditions, people complain as if each day they are dumped on their ass from 15 meters up in the air.
Not many of us will ever be world-beating at what we do, but we can be great at what we do locally. We can be hard-working, ethical, helpful, and consciously improve our surroundings and ourselves. But it is still a work ethic thing, where we have to be willing to work, even if there is no reward likely. Fortune favours the bold. Luck favours the prepared.
I guess it is best to be bold, and prepared.
Taraz
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