In his book The Skinny on Willpower, Jim Randell mentions that his neighbor Paul Newman said the following near the end of his life:
Nothing in life ever came easy to me.
Huh? Nothing came easy to Paul Newman? He was handsome, intelligent, talented, creative, well-educated, highly respected, yet nothing came easy to him?
I think Mr. Newman was simply saying that having talent (for example) does you no good if you don’t work to nurture and apply it.
I know several multi-millionaires, and have known most of them for 20+ years. Some are brilliant, some are not really any “brighter” than I am, but all worked hard to get where they are.
Thinking about this got me to thinking about our society in general, and my sense that so many people today are just looking for the easy way in life. Of course, we should never try to make something harder than it is, but going through life believing that everything should be easy is a mistake. Life doesn’t work that way.
Something for us to think about.