Greatness Takes Work

“The heights by great men reached and kept
Were not attained by sudden flight,
But they, while their companions slept,
Were toiling upward in the night.”

-Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

Achieving greatness, whether in business, or a talent, or our personal lives, takes work….loads and loads of hard, dedicated, crazy amounts of work. And there will be sacrifices we’ll have to make of our time, our comfort, our desires,, and all kinds of things along the way to achieving greatness.

When I meet with entrepreneurs starting their companies I can’t help from thinking “You have no idea yet of just how hard you’ll have to work if you want your company to achieve greatness.” A similar thought goes through my mind whenever I saw young people getting married, “They have no idea yet of how much they’ll need to overcome for their marriages to be great.” And when my children began having their own children I thought, “If only you knew all the lessons you’ll need to learn if you are to prepare your own children to achieve greatness.”

It would be impossible for any of us to comprehend just how hard we will have to work, how many sacrifices we will need to make, and all the lessons we will have to learn as we head into new things – some things we just have to experience in order to truly comprehend. But what we can do is recognize that greatness of any kind isn’t going to be achieved by sudden flight…true greatness can only be achieved if we go into things willing to work our guts out, able to stay dedicated, and committed to persevere.

Then, and only then, will greatness be achieved.

~Amy Rees Anderson (author of the book “What Awesome Looks Like: How To Excel in Business & Life” )

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed.