Whatever it is you aspire to achieve — making it to the NBA, performing as a headliner at Coachella, winning a gold medal, publishing a bestselling novel, or composing a symphony — you might believe that it will take luck, talent, or genetics. Essentially, what might end up standing in your way are resources and gifts.
But before luck, talent, and genetics stand in your way, the preceding obstacle is mental. Your most relentless opponent will be yourself, your own resistance against doing the work.
Luck appears as an opportunity, a moment to seize, a chance to be taken. It’s tempting to believe that luck and talent are all you need. After all, it’s much easier and far more convenient to blame a lack of success on a lack of good fortune.
But the battle to believe in yourself, to commit to the process, the employ the discipline of deciding not to quit despite every single time you want to —which may even be four times per week, and the sacrifice to stay consistent and show up day after day and put in hour after hour? That’s a lifelong battle. It’s also what leads to the luck of the next opportunity.
You can’t reach a destination you don’t travel enough distance to reach, and the distance you do travel doesn’t matter if they all end up in detours.
The work required to get from where you are to where you want to be could be as simple as aligning yourself in the right direction and just putting one foot in front of the other, step by step, minute by minute, hour by hour, day by day. But you do have to decide to do it, and every decision begins in the mind.
