Secret of Greatness Essay Example for Free

Secret of Greatness Essay Hard Work and Opportunity Gets You Further Than Natural Talent â€Å"Talent is cheaper than table salt. What separates the talented individual from the successful one is a lot of hard work.† ― Stephen King. Hard work and dedication is what will get you to the top. A person can have all the talents in the world but that can only get you so far. If you do not have the drive, determination, and dedication to succeed in whatever you do you will not succeed or conquer it as you would if you had put in the hard work to get better. Talent is overrated and overreacted. It is something that you are born with not something you have actually worked toward. The quote by Stephen King explains a lot it tells us that not only is talent cheap or something that is not worked for but it tells us that it is given and also it tells us what separates a talented individual from success is hard work which is something not given at all. Hard work is something you have to want for yourself and you have to go after it with everything you have to succeed. Also in the book â€Å"Outliers† it is said that working hard and practicing will get you further than sheer talent and that if you practice 10,000 hours you will be excellent at your sport or activity. The main thing that I took from this was work ethic, because in order for you to be excellent at something or the best you have to have a great work ethic which brings success. Take Tiger Woods for instance. He was a born winner right? Ever since Tiger was three years of age he had a golf club in his hands. He had competed many times and made a great impact at the professional level. But Tiger may have never got to the professional level if he had not worked. Ever since being a child to an adult he had worked toward his profession critiquing his skill making himself the athlete he is today. At a young age also Tigers father had instilled Tiger with a great deal of discipline which Tiger had carried with him as he worked toward his profession and devoted hours and hours into hard work in dedication. Through his use of discipline and hard work he had to remake his swing twice but he knew in order to be the best he would have to do so. A person that works hard is respected and looked up to because of the time he or she devotes to be the best. A person  that takes talent for granted and does not work hard is looked down upon. Talent is something that people are born with but if you do not take the opportunity to get better then you will not be the best. Opportunity is such a big word because it gives you the chance to succeed or be the best when we talk about hard work increasing your talent. Michael Jordan which is one of the best basketball players to ever live, but he may have never been the best player to ever live if it was not for opportunity and hard work. Michael Jordan was placed on the junior-varsity team at Laney High school in Wilmington N.C from the misrepresentation of his former coach Clifton â€Å"pop† Herring. Coach Herring had made this decision because most of the upperclassmen were guaranteed there starting positions on the varsity squad. At the time underclassmen hardly had played but Coach herring had made an exception for Michael`s fellow teammate Leroy Smith who had stood 6`7 and had made the varsity team. Even though Michael did not make the Varsity team he continued to ball out on his Junior Varsity team and make the best of it. However Over the summer he grew four inches taller and had worked hard t oward his goal to make his high school basketball team. His junior year, Michael had an opportunity to make the team and not to give up on his goal and that’s exactly what he did. Because of Jordan`s opportunity to strive for his goal to be the best, he had gone on to be known as one of the best players to ever step upon the court. I understand that people may say. â€Å"Well if the talent is there, why should I work?† And that in some sports it is kind of about talent more than work, but what I am arguing is that hard work and dedication will get you further than natural talent does. The outcome of a talented individual succeeding more than the hardworking individual in not as great as a hardworking individual succeeding over a natural born talented athlete or talented individual of any kind. In life you have to work hard to be at the top. Many people who sit back and rely on their natural abilities tend to pay the price because they never had that drive, determination, and work ethic. Many athletes are gifted in many ways and have lots of talent but they tend to lose sight of what is important and that is the hard work that you put in. Many of us are faced with many struggles in our lives but in order to overcome our struggles we have to be prepared to work hard and go after what we want. Things in life are not going to be given to you and people that use their natural ability and never  work hard tend to experience many struggles because they have no preparation to conquer the task at hand. Take Bill Gates for instance a money making machine who started out as just an intelligent, ambitious, and determined kid that had been known as the smartest kid on campus. Bill Gates talent was his broad spectrum of knowledge. As a kid he was enrolled in a private school for his outstanding efforts in the classroom. Bill then was introduced to computers and began to take a huge interest in technology. Since then Bill had lived on computers, working on them and spending many strenuous hours critiquing his skill. He then was put in a programmer`s group, they found a new way to apply their computer skill at the University of Washington. In the next year, they got their first opportunity in Information Sciences Inc, in which they were selected as programmers. They were allowed free computer time for exchange to work on a piece of software that could be used to automate company payrolls. Bill had spent twenty to thirty hours a week on computers or more. This opportunity got Bill prepared and made him even more focused on his goal in life. Bill had a talent but it all goes back to his work ethic. He constantly worked hard and put up lots of hours in order to now be one of the richest men in America and he still is working and striving for even more money. We can all be like Michael Jordan or Bill Gates but we have to recognize the opportunities which are given and take full advantage of each and every opportunity and use each opportunity to strive for better. Believing that hard work will get you further then natural talent. Remembering that by working hard and putting forth one hundred percent in whatever you do you will be prepared and ready for what’s in your way ahead. By preparing yourself you will not have to pay the price of failing because of going off of natural born talent all along. Remember no one looks up to a person that doesn’t work for what God has given them, people look up to ones that strive to be the best by putting in the blood, sweat, and tears to succeed at their goals. Work Cited Colvin, Geoffrey. Secret of Greatness. 19 10 2006: n. page Golliver, Ben. High school coach: I never cut Michael Jordan. CNN.Sports, 10 January 2012. Web. 15 Nov. 2013. . Gladwell, Malcolm. Outliers, the Story of Success. Little, Brown Company