Excellence is not easy.
I played some ice hockey with my 14-year old son Aidan today. He got frustrated because his cross-ice saucer passes were ugly and wobbly.
The problem? We hadn’t been on the ice all summer. How could he be great, if we hadn’t practiced in four months?
It made me think: too many people expect excellence at no cost. They expect to be able to be good at something instantly, or at least quickly.
In other words, they’re dreaming.
Anyone who is excellent at anything difficult and worth doing well has put in long hours of effort, practice, and energy. They’ve endured sucking, worked hard to win skill, passed through tears and blood to graduate to competence, and eventually, have sweated their way to excellence.
Expecting easy success is the surest route to failure. Expecting the process of achieving excellence to be hard, painful, sometimes humiliating, and often humbling is the path that will lead to investing dedicated time and effort.
And dedicated time and effort do, over time, usually lead to success.