Align your peak performance when your peak performance is needed. Enjoy a difficult challenge.
When we demonstrate all the other skills—competence, practice, cohesion, initiative—we increase our potential for success. But if we aren’t driven toward greatness, we won’t be our best. Along with our basic skills, composure and confidence are building blocks for greatness. With greatness (however we define it) as the primary goal, we can align our peak performance when our peak performance is needed. As a result of developing ourselves, we develop those around us by modeling an example and raising standards of performance. When we are driven toward greatness, we love a challenge—the tougher, the better.
This isn’t to suggest that being competitive is a direct path to winning. Being a driven toward greatness is not about winning or losing.
With this material, we have a much higher standard.
Along with composure and confidence is a deep drive for greatness—an ability to deliver a peak performance when a peak performance is needed.
It is a beautiful thing to find enjoyment in the grind even when problems are hard to solve, or situations are challenging us.
Challenging situations are opportunities for fun that don’t often occur. Think of it this way: There’s more pleasure in being involved in something hard than there is in being involved in something that anyone else could do. Most of our daily tasks are getting automated as we speak. There is joy in being involved in something more challenging. That’s one of the big secrets behind video games, crossword puzzles, and sports—they give us appropriate challenges to wrestle with and resolve. The same joy can be found in work if we can lock on the problems that stimulate us most.
Being driven toward greatness has two simple parts: a genuine love of a hard battle and being at your best when your best is needed. Luck, some suggest, is when opportunity meets preparation. But really, it’s a result of putting in the time and the work, making it more likely to peak when we need to peak.
We don’t need to be mega-star-champions to reach or tap into a deep drive for greatness. All we have to do is learn to rise to every occasion, try your best, and make those around us better as we do it. It’s not about winning. It’s about learning to give something (our work, a cause, our focus) all we have to give.
PRACTICE
To answer the following questions, rate yourself on a scale of 1-10 by circling the number that best fits you.
List a few times when you have rallied around those around you. Times when you really gave something (your work, a cause, our focus) everything you had.
Were these events in the distant past or are they more current? Is your boldness increasing or decreasing? If you need to become bolder, how are you going to go about attaining it?
COMMIT
[ ] I commit myself to meeting every opportunity with my best effort and lifting those around me.
Alongside technical skills, people who can master a range of subjective skills are better able to influence, deal with ambiguity, bounce back from setbacks, think creatively, and manage themselves successfully in their pursuit of mastery. Learn more about applying craft skills in the modern world.