Ask yourself this very important question right now, “Do you want to be extraordinary?”
What will be your answer? Do you want to live an ordinary life just
like most people or do you want to live an extraordinary life? No matter
what answer you give, it is totally your choice. Some people prefer to
live a normal life with just enough income to support their basic
necessities. There are also some people who dream big and want to live a
big life. They desire for a huge income and they want to live with
luxury lifestyle.
There
is no right or wrong here. It is just your choice and if you choose to
live a normal life, that will be fine as well. And there is nothing
wrong if you dream big and want to accomplish more. In fact, this is
what we always encourage you to do. Dream big and think big. This is because your thinking small will not serve the world.
Today, if Thomas Edison does not dare to dream big and buy into the
idea that inventing a light bulb is not possible, all of us will be
living in darkness. The same goes for Henry Ford who think extraordinary
and invented car and mass produced it. Therefore, the bigger your
dreams, the more you will able to contribute to the world and the more
value you will create to the society.
So I will assume that you do want to live an extraordinary life and
be successful. However, how can you achieve this? What should you do in
order to become the best in what you do? What action should you take to
make you special in your market and that people will recognize you as
extraordinary person?
In fact, every one of us knows that what we have to do in order to
become a great and extraordinary person. Take badminton as example, what
makes the world ranking number one player Lee Chong Wei (at this point
of writing) one of the best? All the great players know how to smash,
how to cross-court, how to drop-shot, etc, but what actually makes the
best of them?
You definitely cannot change the size or the shape of the court, they
are fixed. You cannot change the height of the net and you are using
the same shuttlecock with your competitor. You may wear differently, use
another brand of racket, a lighter shoe, but all of these are still the
same in general. You cannot use a square-shape racket and you cannot
wear slipper to play. So what actually differentiate the Lee Chong Wei
from the rest that makes him one of the top players?
The Ultimate Key To Being Extraordinary
Do you know what the answer is now? The answer is consistent
training! Today, if you have a strong will or the determination to win
the game, it still cannot guarantee that you are going to win. Everyone
who is a national badminton player has the determination to win, I do
not think that they get into the team just to have fun. We all want to
win. Thus, determination or the burning desire itself is not enough to
make you extraordinary.
What really makes someone the best is through consistent training. Bruce Lee, the legendary martial artist once said, “I fear not the man who has practiced 10,000 kicks once, but I fear the man who has practiced one kick 10,000 times.”
If you study the success story of great people such as Michael
Jordan, Bill Gates, Warren Buffet, Tiger Woods and many more, you will
discover that they have actually spent more than 10,000 hours into doing
what they do, and this is how they end up becoming the best in their
field.
Take Tiger Woods as example, he started to expose to the world golf
when he was just a baby! His army-trained father made a driving range in
his garage with carpet and a net. Tiger would sit in his high chair and
watch his dad practice hitting gold balls. When he was 9 months old,
his dad sawed off a golf club to make it very short so that baby Tiger
could strike the ball into the net. Then his parents hired a coach to
train him intensively for 4-5 hours a day. He would then train hitting
800-1000 golf balls until he could hit them perfectly.
By the time Tiger was 18, he was ready to compete in the US Amateur
Championship, and guess what, he had racked up at least 15 years of
practice by then. Obviously, his competitors did not stand a chance and
Woods won the championship by a wide margin. This is what really makes
Tiger Woods the best golf player of all time.
The same thing happened to Michael Jordan. It is his deliberate
training that makes him the best basketball player. His famous quote is
“I’ve missed more than 9000 shots in my career. I’ve lost almost 300
games. Twenty-six times I’ve been trusted to take the game winning shot
and missed. I’ve failed over and over and over again in my life. And
that is why I succeed.”
Can you see the difference between ordinary and extraordinary now? If
you want to be great in what you do, you have to sacrifice and pay for
the price to train and become the best.
What You Need Is… Deliberate Training
Mere training itself is not really the right way. In fact, training
will not make you perfect; training will only make you a new habit. In
other words, training and practice make permanent!
If you want to improve your skill and become extraordinary, you have
to train and practice deliberately. If you train the wrong smash for
1,000 times, you will only make your wrong smash permanent with you,
which is obviously not something that you want.
You must train and practice the right way so that you will program
the best into your subconscious mind. And when this happen, you will
automatically become great and start to create extraordinary results in
your life.
No matter whom you are or what career you are in today, we all need
to keep on practice our skills and improve them so that we will become
the best in what we do. If you are a salesman, practice your
presentation, prospecting, calling, and closing skills so you can become
an extraordinary salesman. If you are a teacher, practice your
communication skill, improve your knowledge in that particular subject
until you become the best and able to teach the poor students to become
the best students in your class.
So are you ready to sacrifice and start to polish your skills today?
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