How To Be Brilliant At What You do
Are you not in awe watching people who do their work so excellently? Don’t you feel goosebumps when you imagine Michael Jordan’s innovative style of playing basketball? How about Michael Jackson’s signature dance move the moonwalk? Don’t you ever wonder how J.K. Rowling wrote such an engaging and riveting series of best selling books?
These aforementioned names of celebrities are people who do their jobs very, very well at extraordinary level. They have style and smooth flow. Just like a true master skier, who became one with their skis, the mountain and the snow. He loses himself in skiing as a master dancer loses himself in the dance. The effort disappears and what is left is the experience of effortlessness.
I speak not only of highly glamourous people but also the “everday people”. The plumbers, carpenters, bakers etc. who do their work with such ease and economy of movement.
When we sit back and marvel at the success of others in their area of expertise we should remember that there are no secret formulas, no sleight of hand tricks, no miracles. .There’s only good old hard work. You get it by practicing and doing it over and over until you arrive at excellence.
In the autobiography of Larry Bird entitled “Drive”, his coach used to tell Larry “No matter how many hoops you shoot, somewhere there’s a kid out there taking one more than you do. If you dribble a million times a day, someone else is dribbling a million and one”. So Larry stayed another extra hour practicing even after his regular practice was over. Larry Bird was a major player in the Boston Celtics decades ago. That team won more NBA Championships than any other teams.
Charles Darwin studied barnacles for eight years and came to know more about them than anyone else. Leonardo Da Vinci made over a thousand drawings of the human hand. You see from these people we can learn that it takes effort to be effortless. And if you are lucky enough to like what you are doing it won’t even feel like work. There’s no way to go but to the top. That’s where they all are, the people who are beautiful to watch while they do their thing brilliantly.
These aforementioned names of celebrities are people who do their jobs very, very well at extraordinary level. They have style and smooth flow. Just like a true master skier, who became one with their skis, the mountain and the snow. He loses himself in skiing as a master dancer loses himself in the dance. The effort disappears and what is left is the experience of effortlessness.
I speak not only of highly glamourous people but also the “everday people”. The plumbers, carpenters, bakers etc. who do their work with such ease and economy of movement.
When we sit back and marvel at the success of others in their area of expertise we should remember that there are no secret formulas, no sleight of hand tricks, no miracles. .There’s only good old hard work. You get it by practicing and doing it over and over until you arrive at excellence.
In the autobiography of Larry Bird entitled “Drive”, his coach used to tell Larry “No matter how many hoops you shoot, somewhere there’s a kid out there taking one more than you do. If you dribble a million times a day, someone else is dribbling a million and one”. So Larry stayed another extra hour practicing even after his regular practice was over. Larry Bird was a major player in the Boston Celtics decades ago. That team won more NBA Championships than any other teams.
Charles Darwin studied barnacles for eight years and came to know more about them than anyone else. Leonardo Da Vinci made over a thousand drawings of the human hand. You see from these people we can learn that it takes effort to be effortless. And if you are lucky enough to like what you are doing it won’t even feel like work. There’s no way to go but to the top. That’s where they all are, the people who are beautiful to watch while they do their thing brilliantly.
Comments