Greatness

Ever since I started working in my new company, I feel more and more like I am on the right track towards this path of "greatness". I am not so foolish to believe that I am great or will definitely become great some day. Nonetheless, today I discovered that in order to even be on the right path to greatness, the minimum requirement is to be a fanatic.

You have to be crazy about what you do. For example, there are people who eat football, sleep football and most definitely talk football. These people are destined to be great football commentators. However, being fanatic is only a necessary condition and is definitely very far from being sufficient. Perseverance is another irreplaceable ingredient. But that is a story for another day. I did blog about perseverance once (Perseverance). Maybe I will extend that another time.

Nonetheless, if you look at the people who have achieved greatness, well, let us begin with Galileo. He died trying to convince everyone that the earth was NOT flat. The name still resonates with the world of science today. Greatness is not limited to the field of science. Another familiar name would be Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart. The musical genius who cared more about music than his health. Technological geniuses, Bill Gates and Steve Jobs (of Microsoft and Apple fame), both of whom did not graduate from college, pursued their passion til no end. Steve Jobs was even fired from Apple (refer to Stay Hungry Stay Foolish), but started NeXT and Pixar even though he was already a millionaire by then. Why should he bother? Now, what about Warren Buffett? He is 79 years-old with an estimated net worth of USD39 billion (should be more if he had not donated the money to the Gates Foundation). Why is he still investing? He can retire and build a time-capsule with his money and fly himself to the next galaxy or do something exciting like that.

I can only think of one reason why these people are successful. They are simply fanatics in their very own fields. They are just so crazy about what they do for a living that no matter what adversities they faced; death, illness, age, being a college dropout, or being fired from the company you founded, if you are crazy about what you do, you will definitely be on the right path towards what the abovementioned people have achieved.

You can call this attribute other names such as passion, love, interest, but those are just milder words for what they do for a living. Imagine if you forcefully prevent them from doing those activities, they would simply go berserk.

So, with this, I urge you to be crazy about what you love doing. Be a fanatic! You'll most probably end up being great, or at least, on the right path.