The Thing That's Actually Separating You From Your Idol

When I was beginning my “purpose-finding” journey, and staring in the face of all the associated challenges (uncertainty, doubt, and fear, to name a few), I came across this little ditty from Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson: 

“Success isn’t always about greatness. It’s about consistency. Consistent hard work leads to success. Greatness will come.” 

This may or may not seem obvious to you. But for me, as I was grappling with the “do-I-or-don’t-I” back and forth on whether or not to pursue my passion, it was exactly what I needed to hear. And it was so darn freeing.

Why?

We tend to hold onto the belief that wildly accomplished people are simply born with a set of tools that we weren’t. 

That might be true some of the time, but for the most part it’s not. 

The most well-known story to illustrate this point is probably Michael Jordan’s.

After being cut from his high school varsity basketball team, Jordan went on to become the greatest basketball player of all time, winning 6 NBA Championships over his 15 season tenure.

How? By listening to his mother’s advice to keep at it: “If you really want it, you work hard over the summer.” 

So he did, and the rest is history.

See, life does happen to reward the people that keep showing up and putting in the work. But what gets in the way is that we are all overly eager to assume that we simply aren’t cut out for greatness. 

It’s crucial to acknowledge here that this thought serves a purpose: it allows us to be lazy; it allows us to have peace of mind while we’re busy cutting corners.

Think about it. It’s much easier to excuse ourselves from trying – from facing the tough slog to achieve “greatness” – when we can convince ourselves that achieving our wildest dreams wouldn’t be possible regardless. When we admit to ourselves that those goals are, in fact, in the realm of possibility things get real. Things get scary. 

Finding our “purpose”, “calling”, “greatness” – whatever you want to call it – and acting on it is, obviously, no easy feat. But I have to believe that refusing to accept the excuse that we just aren’t “good enough” has to be the first step to life-changing things happening for us.

That’s not to say we’ll all go on to found a billion-dollar-company or cure cancer. Of course we won’t. But so what? Freeing ourselves from the shackles of impossibility can only bring on good things. 

We just need to believe that it’ll be well worth it.