Hard work breeds brilliance
The digital age and new speeds of communication that come with it have greatly simplified matters. On the flip side, this simplification of matters even goes to the extent of giving false perception of simplicity over complex matters, including the youth thinking that big things can be achieved fast and easily at no cost.
We now even have many books written on ‘Getting Rich Fast’—feeding new generations with bites of what they want to hear. It is not true! You cannot get rich over days or weeks. Shortcuts like this can only give you a quick journey to the prison—ask Cashgate people or just follow the Cashgate cases to believe this.
The reality is that to achieve greatness or brilliance, you require an exertion of great effort over time. It is hard work that breeds brilliance. We have to work hard over some time in order to achieve meaningful success. Such a journey includes going through the learning curve, making some mistakes, learning from the mistakes, improving what we do and eventually perfecting our methods and execution before we can actually reap the benefits.
I was impressed earlier this week when I read an amazing story of one of the great players at the English Premier League Club Arsenal. Santi Cazorla is a brilliant middle field player who is among the key players that have turned around the performance of Arsenal in the just ended English Premier League season. One of the attributes that make him a force to appreciate on the football ground is that he ably uses both legs. But as I learnt from the article that I read from the Guardian Online news, Cazorla worked so hard to train one of his legs to reach the level that he is at.
The Guardian quotes him as saying: “What I would do after training is stay half an hour and kick the ball against a wall with my weaker foot over and over again to make sure it gets stronger. And young players should remember that everything comes from the base of hard work, so never give up. … It’s something I work on all the time to make sure that level never gets any lower.”
We see that Cazorla reaches out to correct the common misconceptions among young people that somehow brilliant people were born like that. The truth is that to be brilliant at anything, you have to consistently work really hard. Even the other great players like Lionel Messi and Christian Ronaldo, are also products of serious hard work. Messi and Ronaldo come from a background where they have worked very hard throughout their lives. Even in the last couple of years as they have competed consistently for the World Footballer of the Year, they have each worked really hard on a daily basis to outdo each other, to become better every day and to break records of records!
That goes to reinforce the point that Cazorla makes very clearly—everything comes from hard work. Young people, never give up if you are to follow what Cazorla believes based on his practical experience on his journey to the brilliance that we see in him. Remember that he says he would stay behind and do an extra one and half hours of practice kicking balls with the weaker leg to make it equally strong. Over time, Cazorla achieved his goal and has become one of those unique players that can shoot the ball from either of the legs.
We can all apply Cazorla’s principle in our different fields. Students can apply this at school, the young people learning to become musicians can also put in more hours than their peers to become the masters of their musical equipment and voice, those learning business have to spend long days and nights on business to master it just as is required of a young man or lady learning to become a tailor or chef. Good luck as you implement Cazorla’s idea on how to acquire brilliance in your field. It will come as a product of sustained hard work!
