Going the Extra Mile to Greatness
I love the following quotation by Alberta Lee Cox who apparently wrote this while she was in the 8th Grade.
“It is not enough to be good if you have the ability to be better.
It is not enough to be very good if you can be great.”
This really touches on our capacity to recognize the extent of our own abilities. Many people are content to stay exactly as they are. They have no driving force to improve themselves. Others recognize that they could be better at some particular skill-set and they strive to make such improvement.
However, the true professional, the true champ, recognizes that it is not even enough to be very good if they have the ability to be great.
Muhammad Ali (former World Heavyweight Boxing champ), was such a person. At the age of 18, he won the light heavyweight Gold medal in the 1960 Rome Olympics. For most people this would be the peak of their athletic career – but not Muhammad Ali. He was not content with that. He recognized that he had the potential for further greatness. He worked really hard to further perfect his speed and agility in the ring. He ran and rope skipped extensively. He pushed himself to perfection. In fact, whenever he was so exhausted from running that he felt he could not take even one more step, he would always run an extra mile. That’s what gave him his tremendous stamina in the ring – mental as well as physical.
This is what it takes if you want to be great. You have to go that extra mile.
