Hard work as an opportunity

Hard work as an opportunity

Success in whatever area of your life will take hard, focused work, and if you don’t know this you need to change your mindset to reflect this simple, unalterable fact. It is true that in contemporary society we are fans of immediate gratification, wanting the quick buck, the fifteen minutes of fame. However, genuine success and innovation requires hours of graft and elbow grease.

Take the story Colonel Sanders (Young, 2016). When most people would be looking back on a life well lived and thinking about drawing their pension, Colonel Sanders developed a recipe for fried chicken and he took it on the road to try and sell it. He was told no by a 1000 or more restaurants before he was told yes. Now you would have to search long and hard before you found someone who didn’t know what “finger lickin’ good” meant.

Another example of this hard work and drive is Starbucks’ CEO Howard Schultz. He must drink a lot of coffee to work as hard as he does! Rumour has it that he gets to work at 6am and stays until 7am. He doesn’t stop at weekends, Skyping employees in different time zones during closing time and from home and generally working around the clock. Likewise, Tim Cook must have found it hard to fill the shoes of Steve Jobs. However, he got the top job at Apple for a reason. Apparently, he has always been a hard worker. It is said that he starts sending emails at the unreal hour of 4:30am! Most at the company say he's the first in to arrive at the office and the last to leave. Likewise, he used to hold full meetings on Sunday night in order to be ready for Monday. These two examples illustrate that to be successful you need to work hard and commit to your goal, and if you are looking for immediate gratification or a quick fix, then you have to change your mindset.
So, to recap, success is a long road and the journey will sometimes be tough. Know though that these small mindset tweaks will provide strategies that can help you on this journey. Not only will they help you reach your destination, they will also enable you to plan the journey more effectively.  So, from one to fifteen:
1.Don’t see challenge as a chore, but as a sign that you are operating outside of your comfort zone, and learning.
2.Focus on the process, and then the end goals will take care of themselves.
3. Never underestimate the power of practice, as this is what makes success, not raw talent.
4.Plan, make prototypes. You may not get it right first time, and that is fine.
5.Be eager for discovery
6.Believe you can achieve
7.Don’t think that success = rich
8.Condition yourself for success
9.Value the important over the urgent
10.Do things today
11.Value others
12. Be thankful
13. Improve yourself and your life will improve
14. Don’t beat yourself up
15.See hard work as an opportunity.