Paying The Success Price

Existence alone is not an achievement that earns rewards.
 
Nevertheless, society may oblige with provisions. Since laziness is the default setting of everyone, few use such free help as opportunity for self-reliance and success.
 
Moreover, giving people everything they need removes the challenges of reality that demand effort and ingenuity. The result can be a ruined life of emptiness rather than meaning.
 
In our natural setting, survival required sustained effort and creativity simply to eat and find shelter. Today, basic sustenance often requires far less. What remains demanding is not survival, but purpose—the thought, fortitude, and creative ambition required to build a life that matters or to change the world for the better.
 
Sustained effort, not gifts, talent, or luck, is the true cost of success.
 
Thomas Edison, America's most prolific inventor, performed thousands of experiments to get to a desired endpoint. He said, "I have not failed. I've just found 10,000 ways that won't work." He also observed, "The reason a lot of people do not recognize opportunity is because it usually goes around wearing overalls and looking like hard work."
 
The history of successful people usually reveals these common rules and wisdom:
 

• Make a plan to achieve a goal, and then do it with urgency, enthusiasm, and persistence.

 

• Failure is not fatal; it simply reveals what not to do.

 

• You’re never a loser until you quit trying.

 

• The only time you can’t afford to fail is the last time you try.

 

• Desire and intention are the most productive of our faculties.

 

• Ideas bring in nothing unless carried out.

 

• The smallest action is greater than the greatest intention.

 

• Be a doer, not a dreamer

​

​Athletics offers no refuge from such rules. Larry Bird, who eventually turned out to be one of the greatest NBA basketball players of all time, admitted to very little natural talent, but lots of tireless work. At a time when he was making over 92% in free-throws and leading the entire league, he missed both shots in a critical game. Even though the team won the game, he was sullen. When asked why by reporters, he said, "It's my fault. I didn't take my 100 free-throw practice shots today."
 
Ernest Hemingway reportedly went back through his manuscript of The Old Man and the Sea eighty times, grooming and editing it.
 
Virgil spent twelve years working on the Aeneid, a 100,000-word epic poem written around 29–19 BCE. He wrote on papyrus leaves with a reed pen and ink made of soot and a gum. To make edits he used waxed boards and bone pens, and erased by smearing the wax. The Aeneid was Rome's origin story and justification for rule. Later it became one of the foundational works of Western literature. He was perfecting it up until he died.
 
Leonardo da Vinci spent twelve years on The Last Supper and often would be so absorbed in the work he would forget to eat.
 
Michelangelo's The Last Judgment was preceded by more than two thousand preliminary sketches.
 
We can make a difference, become better people, improve the world, and reach the limits of our genetic potential. But none of it happens by wish or intention alone. The outcome is decided by how much sustained effort we are willing to endure.

---