The idea of natural born greatness is part of the fiber of our culture. “Talent” is defined in the Oxford English Dictionary as “mental or physical endowment; natural ability.”
Near the end of his career, when Michael Jordan confided to Chicago Bulls Coach Phil Jackson his intention to retire, the coach responded with an unusual appeal…
“Michael, pure genius is something very, very rare and if you are blessed enough to possess it, you want to think a long time before you walk away from using it.”
But where does GREATNESS like that come from?
Imagine Eric Clapton playing the guitar, Usain Bolt on the track or Banksy at an empty wall. Like Jordan, they are all people who have achieved greatness in their specific fields. When they practice their art, they make it look so effortless.
Exceptional skill may look effortless — the spectacular putt or pirouette — but getting there takes relentless dedication, years of practice and humility.
“It’s NOT that I’m so smart,” Einstein once said. “It’s just that I stay with problems longer.”
THE MYTH OF GIFTEDNESS
Although Usain Bolt looks like he is out for a nice Sunday jog, what he does is extremely difficult and hundreds of thousands of hours have gone into perfecting his craft.
We all recognize the virtues of hard work but could any amount of effort transform the clunky motions of an Average Joe into the majestic swing of Tiger Woods or the gravity-defying leap of Michael Jordan? Could the ordinary brain ever expand enough to conjure the far-flung visions of Einstein or Matisse?
Conventional wisdom says no, that some are simply born with certain gifts while others are not.
Each episode of Understanding Greatness will prove that to be false and show both anecdotally and scientifically that greatness is inside all of us.
Over the last 3 decades, the field of expertise studies has examined high achievement from every possible angle. They studied golfers, nurses, typists, gymnasts, violinists, chess players, basketball players and computer programmers. The breathtaking insight that’s been revealed through in the work is this: Talent is not a inherent gift; it’s the result of a deliberate process that, up till now, has been nearly impossible to document.
As long as this slow honing of skills went unseen and unarticulated, the mature skills themselves seemed almost magical. Now, researchers are making the invisible visible. They are showing how all abilities are based in process. They are exploding the myth of “giftedness.”
Certainly, no one seems to have been born with more gifts than Michael Jordan, and yet those stunning talents were not evident in his childhood. During his sophomore year of high school, after attending summer basketball camp with his friend Roy smith, Jordan didn’t even make the varsity basketball squad. Smith did. So what changed?
Jordan became a man possessed.
THE RAGE TO MASTER
When we say that someone is talented, we think we mean that person has some innate predisposition to excel, but in the end, we only apply the term retrospectively, after he or she has made significant achievements.
Understanding Greatness will track the journey undertaken by the best and brightest en route to the pinnacle of their professions. Along the way, a universal and inspiring theme will emerge: Greatness isn’t given… it’s taken.
Researchers universally agree that a desperate personal desire is the key to extraordinary achievement … what some scientists have termed “the rage to master”—a fervent, never let go willfulness and focus that drives someone towards greatness.
High achievers have exceptional drive. It’s a trait that all our those profiled in Understanding Greatness will share.
From Olympic athletes to Nobel physicists, to poet laureates, you simply don’t see remarkable achievement without it. And though the drive is something all great talents share, their stories of their journeys towards greatness are completely unique.
The intense ambition evolves out of complex, real world dynamics, settling into people’s psyches at different ages and circumstances—sometimes from extreme adversity, sometimes as a proxy for revenge, sometimes as a way of proving oneself to a beloved/feared parent or sibling. The collection of potential catalysts for intense ambition provides limitless points of entry into the journey towards excellence.
Understanding Greatness will identify those motivations and decode the story behind the world’s most inspiring individuals.
Along the way, we’ll discover that becoming great at something doesn’t require the right combination of DNA, but the right combination of resources, mentality, strategy, persistence and time. The moral of each story will be an inspiring one: these are tools available to any normal functioning human being… including us.
This is not to say that every person has the same resources and opportunity or that anyone can be great at anything; biological and circumstantial advantages/disadvantages abound. But in revealing talent to be a process, the simple idea of genetic giftedness is forever debunked. It is no longer reasonable to attribute talent or success to a specific gene or other mysterious gift. The real gift, it turns out, belongs to virtually all of us.
The new science suggests that few of us know our true limits, and that the vast majority of us have not even come close to tapping what scientists call our “unactualized potential.” Most underachievers are not prisoners of their own DNA; they have simply been unable to tap into their true potential.
Very few of us ever get to know our own true potential, and far too many of us mistake early difficulties for innate limits. We do not—and cannot—know our own life’s potential unless and until we push ourselves to our limit.
Understanding Greatness inspires the questions: What are your limits? Have you really discovered your own potential?
With humility, with hope, and with extraordinary determination, greatness is something to which all of us can aspire.
Understanding Greatness will show how the greatest in their fields toiled in obscurity before earning immortality. It will illustrate how no one’s fate is genetically predetermined. In the end, the series will be an empowering and positive call to action for viewers everywhere to realize the greatness that is inside us all. The gift is learning that it’s ours for the taking.
EVERY STORY IS DIFFERENT
Recent years have produced key research which has struck a deep and resonant chord far beyond the halls of academia — the famous 10,000-hours-to-greatness observation of Anders Ericsson and others, described in several recent smart books, including Malcolm Gladwell’s Outliers and Daniel Coyle’s The Talent Code and Anders Ericsson’s The Cambridge Handbook of Expertise and Expert Performance.
After several thousand years of “whoa — how did he do that?” this research marks the first rigorous attempt to understand what makes certain people great at what they do.
Not surprisingly, this research consistently revealed a work ethic found in every single person’s route to greatness. And yet, there are so many different paths to get there…
Scientists admit that other factors besides hard work come into play. Each profile in Understanding Greatness will reveal that, although all high achievers share an incomparable work ethic, factors such as inspiration, motivation, passion, perseverance, and self-belief make each of their stories extremely unique. Environmental and cultural circumstances also play a huge role, as does dumb luck.
What follows are just a few of the factors that can impact the story of an individual’s journey towards greatness in ways that are unique and personnel. Framed by these unique factors, each episode will show that no two journeys are the same and all of them are equally fascinating…
