TAKE THE SHOT
“We miss 100% of the shots we don’t take”
–Wayne Gretzky
It’s hard to argue that Wayne Gretzky is one of the BEST professional hockey
players of all-time. Hockey is Wayne’s life-passion and his message is simple: The
more shots you take, the greater the chance of scoring.
While these words certainly resonate in the Sports World there is a strong
correlation of this quotation in relevance to our pedestrian lives- after all, few of us
are blessed with God-given athletic talents like Wayne!
Let me share this with you:
The key to learning is failure, more specifically, learning from our failures. In
order to gain mastery of a skill or a trade, one would need to put in seven (7,000)
to ten thousand (10,000) hours of practice and training, learning from one’s
mistakes along the way and gradually improving over time. Therefore the path to
success requires hard work – it is NOT going to be easy.
Motivational guru, Brian Tracy so eloquently explains the ultimate formula for
mastery in the following steps:
1) Fail
2) Learn
3) Grow
4) Repeat step 1 (over and over and over, again!)
Are YOU willing to learn from failure or are you avoiding failure altogether?
Are you bouncing around from job to job or stuck in a place where you mistake
busy-ness for productivity?
You don’t REALLY want to be there.
Are you really PRESENT in the moment?
If the devil doesn’t make you BAD, he’ll make you BUSY!
Stop the madness of aimlessness and despair and start living.
WE NEED PURPOSE IN OUR LIVES.
Purpose is the mother of passion.
Purpose drives focus.
Focus drives hard work.
Hard work, applied to learning a skill, is just another name for failure.
WITHOUT FAILURE THERE IS NO GROWTH.
PURPOSE GIVES MEANING TO FAILURE AND TURNS SUFFERING INTO
GROWTH.
Without purpose we are more likely to give up on the amount of practice and hard
work required to build a particular skill- Ultimately, because of the suffering we
will surely have to endure along the way. Most people give up on a particular
career path, discontinue learning a skill or settle for mediocrity – comprehending
the sure magnitude of the work and dedication required. You will get knocked
down- A LOT- how many times will you get up?
Find your passion, do something you love and you will be focused on doing
whatever it takes- FAILING, LEARNING AND GROWING ALONG THE WAY
to mastery. If we can find our purpose in life- what motivates us day in and day
out- we too, will take as many “shots” as we need to in order to BE OUR BEST-
like Wayne (too bad he was a NY Ranger).
IT’S NOT GOING TO BE EASY BUT IT WILL BE WORTH IT
Start making progress NOW, it’s all you have!
