Why are we so afraid of hard work?
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It takes years of hard work to become an overnight success.
I recently read a book by the acclaimed finance guru Dave Ramsey. He said something that really struck a cord with me. In a chapter where he was discussing the idea of success, he said that it took him fifteen years of hard work to become an overnight success. I thought about how true that was for most people. We, as a society, tend to think that people just wake up one day and say "I am going to write an award winning book today" or "I think I will become a famous painter". We cling onto the stories of people like Stephanie Myers and J.K Rowling, both of who became internationally successful from their first novel. We watch countless interviews with them and put pictures of them on our wall and say, "Why can't I be successful like them?" But, why don't we ever say, "I want to have two failed businesses, loose eight elections and suffer a nervous breakdown, so that I can build enough character to someday become the greatest president this country has ever known, just like Abraham Lincoln". We never say, "I want to be like Robert M Pirsig and receive rejecting letters from 121 publishers, so that when I go on to sell more than 5 million copies of my book, I will really appreciate my success".
We live in a world of instant gratification, where you can upload a video to Youtube on a Monday and be on the Today show discussing it by Friday. We don't want to work for things anymore. We are not interested in staying the course, building character or perfecting our craft. We are just interested in money and a fan base. Even people, who do work hard and struggle for years end up being called an overnight success. Take two very successful self-published authors, J. A Konrath and Amanda Hocking as examples. Both have been ridiculed for writing a crappy book, slapping it up on Amazon and just "Getting Lucky". What people don't know is that J. A Konrath has been submitting his work to publishers since the early eighties. That's longer than a lot of his naysayers have been alive, but we never hear about that. People put down Amanda Hocking for being a young girl in her early twenties who "Got Lucky" writing a book while working a fulltime job as a caretaker. No one ever mentions that she has written books her whole life and completed 17 novels before she ever started self-publishing. How many people can say that? Plus, everyone likes to breeze over the fact that while most of us sit on the couch channel surfing after work, she was up all hours of the night writing books and going after her dreams. Never mind that the so-called "Crap" they write has been loved around the world by millions of adoring fans. Lets just put them and their work down to stroke our own ego's, while we stair longingly at J.K Rowlings picture on our wall.
What I am saying is that it takes hard work to be good at anything. Usually long hours, tireless determination and a thick skin in order to take all the eye rolling from friends and family who don't understand why you don't give up and get a real job. Yes, there will always be the few exceptions to the rule, but we need to see them for what they are; exceptions. Don't we remember the old saying that anything worth having is worth waiting for? So lets stop idolizing the expiations to the rule and start comparing ourselves to the people out there who put the time and effort into their craft and make something wonderful. Someone hand me a pushpin, I have some new people to look up to.
