It’s not about finding what you can do better than others, but about finding what you can do exceptionally well relative to other ways you could expend yourself.
Related Quotes
It is not by muscle, speed, or physical dexterity that great things are achieved, but by reflection, force of character, and judgment; in these qualities old age is usually not only not poorer, but it is even richer.’
—Cicero (106–43 BC)
Of all the sources of fire, I’ve concluded that perhaps the biggest is sheer unadulterated love of the doing. It’s like a personal flywheel within: If you discover something you’re encoded for and you love doing it, then you can't help but want to do more of it, which means you can't help but get better at it, which means you can't help but move toward the intrinsic satisfaction of excellence in what you do, which further reinforces doing what you are encoded for and love to do.
By its very nature, this study relies on people with highly visible accomplishments. I worry that some readers might misinterpret this as an implicit worthiness hierarchy that valorizes achieving fame over taking more unseen paths. I also worry that some of the people in the study can feel so unapproachable in what they made of their lives that readers might discount the relevance of learning from them, or be left wondering, “Well, their lives are interesting, but could I ever do what they did?” I share that feeling. Studying Charles Colson made me feel somewhat intimidated by the standard he lived to after prison.
I don’t think of the people in this study as inspirational; I think of them as inspired. I don’t aim to inspire you to be exactly like any of the specific people in this study. I hope, rather, that you’re able to find yourself clicked into frame, inspired by what fits your encodings and ignites your inner fire, and that you commit to pursue it with excellence.
One might expect that I’d wrap up a book like this with a set of recipes for living or a list of ten steps to a better life, or a bevy of helpful prescriptions. The findings of the research and the ethos of this book stand against the very idea of doing that. You might have come to greatly admire many of the people in this study (as did I), but that doesn’t mean you should try to become exactly like any of them. Don’t confuse admiration with prescription, role models with cookie-cutter templates.