Americanflyergantrycrane,
Few of us truly try our best until someone or some circumstance light a fire under us. None of us has to be as bright (IQ) as the next guy to excel…it may take twice the effort, but it can nonetheless be done.
For me early in life it was a father that kept encouraging the effort, not the result, and despite my best efforts to derail my own train.
In school, the results eventually came. I admit it discouraged me to have to spend double the time on school stuff while others pumped out the grades barely trying. And when I worked for a company that only reimbursed tuition, books, and fees for A’s, my father half joked how amazing it was that my true academic abilities came to light only when I faced paying the freight myself. I liked the comment from the Bronx poster who said something about the imprint of the commuter rail train seat on his rear end from all the time he spent going to and from night school. I got mine over a period of nearly five years, all year round.
In athletics, it took a fellow teammate that busted his butt every minute of every practice to get where he was. He had polio (braces and all) as a child. He was the one who had to try harder, much harder, than the rest. Because of my lack of effort and out of his own frustration, he called me a useless piece of cr!p in front of all my teammates, and the fire was ignited. It was then that I learned something that has stuck with me ever since. I drive this bus. Doing my best is all I can expect of myself and others. But am I truly doing my best? Or am I loading the plate too full and compromising everything along the way?
We are all a unique combination of three things. Innate ability. Self-driven persistence. And dumb luck.
I’ve never met anyone truly blessed with all three, at least not all three at the same ti