You’ve been challenged to present what you’ve done to make the world better place in front of the entire human population. Sure, you could prepare a marvelous speech but the catch is, you only have 90 seconds. “What an ordeal!” you may think. But wait, there’s more. Who is your competition? Only the world’s elite- the best of the best and the most affluent human beings alive.
10 years is the amount of time you have to prepare for this pitch. Come pitch day, you blow everyone’s socks off! They announce to winner to be; YOU! You’ve now been named a true hero and inspiration to all. But, how’d you do it?
Let’s take a look at the 2 scenarios and following outcomes that could have taken place:
1. You go off the pure luck and not much is achieved:
There’s only 90 seconds to speak so it seems ridiculous to you that you have 10 years to prepare. Given the limited speaking time, you believe that there’s no way to make a pitch that’ll truly impress the world. Moreover, you fear that people will call you foolish for taking up such unrealistic ambitions.
You realize that 10 years is much too long to wait and prepare but you decide to throw yourself into the pool. When pitch day rolls along, you scribble up a short spiel that morning and hop along to the competition. The outcome? Zip, nada. Nothing, is a normal outcome that you expected because how could you ever be on par with the most successful people in the world? You shrug your shoulders and continue life.
2. You put every little ounce of effort into preparing and are dubbed First Place Overall:
You think to yourself that this is a valuable chance to prove yourself on a world stage. You spend years practicing until you become an acclaimed and eloquent speaker. As the saying goes: amateurs practice until they get it right; professionals practice until they can’t get it wrong. You use this phrase as motivation to give it your all. When pitch day comes along, you’re as prepared as anyone could ever have been and you breeze to the top of the competition.
You reflect back on your journey leading up to this day. People had booed you, discouraged you and outraged you. Others had praised you, applauded you and cheered for you. Some even gave you lemons and chocolate. In the end, it was all worth it because you had grown in the process and discovered surprising aspects of yourself that you had never known about before. You proceed to lead a prolific and prosperous life.
Now, instead seeing this whole situation as a pitch on a global stage, replace the pitch with a gold winning Olympian sports routine, a bestseller written novel or an highly praised architectural structure. Throughout your lifetime, there are going to be countless opportunities for you to take up long-term goals. No emphasis can describe just how much time and effort is really needed to make these goals and dreams come true. You never realize how much time you have on your hands to do the things you want until you a clock counting down. We all have the chance to succeed, as long as we are putting in the effort and time needed to make it come together.
