Outliers and many folks who have succeeded in their respective careers and professions are people who have self-drive, passion, and the right attitude when confronted with challenges. People who fail or lose opportunities usually have a bad attitude. They take things and events personally and fail to move past them.
There is no great runner. There is a healthy person who dedicates his time to training harder. Puts in the time to go the extra mile. To wake up early and do something come rain come sunshine. Someone who is self-driven to achieve beyond the motivations their coaches or close friends tell them. People who see challenges, frustrations, pain, or disappointments as fuel to keep improving and raising the bar.
There is no genius. There are average folks who put in so many hours and time in focusing on one thing they truly believe in. If their thing of focus finally becomes a break-through by the impact it creates to society, you have a genius as the media will pick up on it and before you know it, everyone knows.
Cheptegei is now a global icon. A king of the track field. Every writer is telling you about pace he ran the laps, and the world record he broke. It is a fantastic ending.
Few write about the effort and hours Cheptegei puts in the preparation and training. But that is not it. If you dedicate yourself to something that solves a mega problem, you become a genius notwithstanding the amount of time
Cheptegei has a winning attitude.
I define attitude as “how one reacts to what happens to them or other people do to them.” Imagine you are at school, and someone bullies you. Your attitude or your reaction to the bully may make or break your career.
A winning child may react by reading harder to prove the bully wrong. Such kind of reaction is a positive attitude. It is developmental and recommended. I do not know whether the attitude is by nature or nurture. What I know one can easily be in control of their emotions and how they react to what happens to them through training.
When Joshua Cheptegei, the yet to be ratified World Record Holder for 5,000m suddenly lost his lead with about 900m to go by failing to move and let Kenyan Geoffrey Kamworor win was the lowest point in any runners career as it happened before the home crowd.
With a good attitude, Joshua focused on the next race. Medical experts examined him and discovered that it could have been due to dehydration to suddenly fail the way he did. And he never looked back.
What is your attitude?
When someone bullies you do you stop whatever you are doing and wait for revenge by fighting. Or you go to the class teacher or the school prefects, report the culprit and go back to reading your books with more energy and passion to teach the bully a lesson of their lifetime by winning them in class and national examinations.
When your performance appraisal is done badly, do you give up and hate your supervisor or you go the extra mile and proactively engage with your supervisor about what to do to make sure you are on the same page and get a great evaluation next time.
Attitude is the difference between winners and losers.
The difference between academic giants and academic dwarfs.
A good attitude always wins.
Copyright Mustapha B Mugisa 2020. All rights reserved.
