When I was a teenager my Grandpa used to tell me that the world was my oyster. I used to dream of being a famous soccer player or great musician on stage wowing the world. The problem was those dreams were totally unrealistic. Just fantasizing about something doesn’t make it happen. It comes through hours and hours of deliberate practice.

In “Talent is Overrated” Geoff Colvin talks about what people like Tiger Woods, Mozart, and Jerry Rice went through to achieve the levels they did. We mere mortals like to talk about how talented these people are, but really that is our excuse to not have to work hard. If we try something for a couple days and don’t get great results we throw up our hands and say we don’t have “the gift” and go back to watching other people do it. But the truth is that although great performers may have certain innate abilities that we don’t have, in most cases they just worked harder and smarter than we are willing to work. I would be willing to bet most of us could hit a golf ball pretty darn well if you had good instruction and spend 20,000 hours practicing.

One of my goals is to stop fantasizing and start doing. And not only doing, but doing intelligently. In Oasis’ “Fade Away” Noel sings “while we’re living, the dreams we have as children fade away.” I don’t want my dreams to fade away. I have new dreams now, and I want to see them come to pass. I don’t want mediocrity to be my portion in life.