ingredients for success: dedication and talent
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Whatever you want to achieve in life, it is possible. Do you want to be a professional soccer player? or a highly skilled professor? or do you want to work from 9 to 5 and get drunk during weekends? Whatever it is, it is possible. I think the two ingredients you need to get what you want are dedication and talent. Where dedication can live sometimes without talent, but talent alone is not enough, it needs dedication.
All guys know this feeling. You’re watching Studio Sport and see all these professional soccer players, then you think I can do this too, how hard can it be…. You’re probably right, you can become a professional soccer player, the only thing is that you’re already 28 or somewhere around 30. All these guys are so young! They made a choice, they started when they were 6,7 or 8 and played soccer all day long. They were so dedicated to become a professional player, and that with a fair amount of talent got them to the first division of Dutch soccer.
In other sports you see the same thing : Dedication and talent will get you where you want to be. To mention some phenomenons (and links to some of their greatest moments): Tiger Woods (started playing golf at age 4), Roger federer (the first thing he touched after his birth was a tennis ball), Pieter van den Hoogenband (He has spend more hours in a pool than all people in Scheveningen together on a hot summer day), Teun de Nooijer (some people believe he’s married with his hockey stick).
But this doesn’t only work in sports. I truly believe dedication and passion can bring you your dream job, your dream company, your dream partner. Whatever you dream, it can be yours.
So what do you want to achieve? Who do you want to meet? With whom do you want to work? What is it that drives you?
These are the questions all books write about. The Secret, Love is the Killer App, 4-hour workweek, how to win friends and influence people, and I can can continue for a while….
I have been thinking about these questions a lot in the last year and I will continue doing so.
I answered this question earlier this year: What do you want to be when you grow up?
Sjors said,
Wrote on August 14, 2007 @ 9:39 am
Good post, I had the same thoughts once, and I think you are right, you can achieve what ever you want to. But you can only choose one (or a few things). You can’t be the best soccer player and the gold swimmer in one life time. Focus is necessary, and that means saying no to a million other fun things.
And as a second thought you shouldn’t aim for a future where the amount of people can be counted on one hand, or is limited to one. As I want to be the next president of the USA, or I want to be the best soccer player ever. It’s more healthier I guess to go for “I want to become a minister” or I want to be one of the best soccer players ever.
But than again, if you aren’t dedicated to be the best.. will you ever become one of the best?
Thomas said,
Wrote on August 14, 2007 @ 10:40 am
Nice post Patrick.
Though I would add an extra ingredient.
- Passion.
Being passionate with what you are doing is very important as well. Passion will enforce you in the difficult times, Passion will make you cross the boundaries and Passion will make you celebrate your achievements even more!
Once again, great post!
Best,
Thomas
Patrick said,
Wrote on August 21, 2007 @ 12:08 pm
@Sjors I do agree, you can’t be a professional soccer player AND a professional tennis player at the same time, so you have to make choices. But this is a new phenomenon; in the old days it was possible. To give you an example… My mother played on Wimbledon (9 years), traveled all over the world to compete in tennis tournaments, was 7 times Dutch champion Squash (which is how she met my dad), and was in the selection of the national hockey team. Nowadays all sports are professionalized (even petangue can be a money maker), so you have to choose early on on what you want to be the best at. This doesn’t mean that a professional tennis player isn’t very good at other sports (golf, squash, soccer i.e. ball sports).
Outside of Sports it is more easy to do more, to be good at a lot of things I guess.
@thomas You’re totally right. Passion is the driver for dedication. If you’re not passionate about something you cannot be totally dedicated to it. I guess I have to change the title of the post to Passion and talent…