How do you repeat the extraordinary?

Continuing yesterday’s post “What have you done for me lately”

Whether you’re a leader, an artist, or an every day working person – after basking in the glow of doing something extraordinary, the inevitable question always starts to cloud over - “How will I ever top this?”

How can you possibly win gold again?  How do you surprise her with just the right gift again?  How do you create something earth-shattering and timeless all over again?

Ever wonder what happens to one-hit-wonders?  When I hear Biz Markie’s ‘just a friend’ or the New Radicals ‘you get what you give’ on the radio, I imagine they probably tried a number of times cranking it out once again.  But like many of us do, they probably realized at some point that a large part of their previous success was because they had just the right tune, hook, melody, lyric, and marketing, at just the right time.

Even if you’ve put your 10,000 hours of hard work in, the truth is, most noteworthy accomplishments have an element of the stars aligning just right for the extraordinary to happen.

So why do we often live assuming we can reproduce it all again?  Our skills, our hard work, even our passion, doesn’t entitle us to extraordinary outcomes.

There’s no such thing as defending champions. You can only defend something that can be taken away from you.  Your past achievements will always be yours no matter what.  You’ve made your mark in history; now let’s stop living there.

While there’s some truth to ’success begets success’, it can also cripple you to living in your past ‘glory days’.

Pat yourself on the back, and move on.  The world owes you nothing.  You owe it to yourself and your God to be utterly faithful to the call you’ve been given this next moment.

What’s extraordinary is when you can live each day putting every ounce of yourself on the line, regardless of the extraordinary.

Tagged as: achieve, extraordinary, repeat, success, winning