The Magic Key to Greatness

I just finished reading a fascinating book, "The Story of You," by Steve Chandler. He introduces his final chapter with an intriguing quote by Bette Davis ("Attempt the impossible in order to improve your work") and then goes on to say:

"My work is often to find a magic key for people to use to take themselves from good to great, and I think I've found it. The magic key to greatness is doing something counterintuitive and pursuing the 'hard part' of your work.

"Most people don't want to do that. They want to focus on the easy (and soft) part of their work. But it helps more to focus on the hard part. To find what's hard and do more of it. Not less.

"Most of us avoid what's hard. Unless we are truly committed to being great. Then it changes. Then we seek what's hard."

The author goes on to give the example of a basketball player who is a good shooter and passer but not such a hot dribbler. So he goes around dribbling all day, day after day, and before long, he is a great dribbler and his game is vastly improved. "He turned the hard part into the easy part. The best part."

I haven't been able to do this just yet -- who wants to do the "hard part"? -- but I am still aiming to do so. This idea of doing the "hard part" is not unique to Chandler, though he has a unique way of expressing it. Here is Vince Lombardi on the same idea:

"The difference between a successful person and others is not a lack of strength, not a lack of knowledge, but rather in a lack of will."

Similarly, Brian Tracy writes of doing that which is "right and important, although difficult":

"Disciplining yourself to do what you know is right and important, although difficult, is the high road to pride, self-esteem, and personal satisfaction."

Perhaps this idea is best summed up in the simple maxim, "Do the right thing, not the easy thing."

I thoroughly enjoyed reading Chandler's "The Story of You." He sets forth many provocative ideas in this little book about how we can move ahead and create a better life for ourselves.

He ends his short treatise with this gem:

"As a man's real power grows
and his knowledge widens,
ever the way he can follow grows narrower:
until at last he chooses nothing,
but does only and wholly
what he must do."
Ursula K. Le Guin
A Wizard of Earthsea