As Derek Jeter said, there may be people who have more talent than you,

but there's no excuse for anyone to work harder than you do.

At the end of the day, whether you believe in talent or not is completely irrelevant.

Everyone should believe in hard work. Everything in your life is literally a result of that.

You're born in infant, a lump of flesh that can't even hold its own head up.

And yet, somehow, by practicing, by learning, by growing, you're able to get better.

You're literally incapable of anything when you're born.

Every skill that you have in your life, all the things that you take for granted. At one point,

you couldn't do them. So understanding that humans truly are an adaptation machine and that

they are capable of acquiring any skill that they want, but it requires hard work. It requires

that you do the reps. It requires that you put in the effort.

And at the end of the day, the people that you're going to surpass are not going to be the people

that have less talent than you. Maybe they didn't have more talent than you. It's going to be the

people that you're willing to out work. But until you're willing to out work them, you're always

going to be stuck. And as John Irving said, to do anything really well, you have to overextend yourself.

And that's the key. If you want to put in an extraordinary performance, if you want to absolutely

dazzle people, then you have to do something amazing. You have to be willing to put yourself out there.

You have to be willing to do things that other people think are going to break you.

That other people simply believe there's no way that you could be able to pull that off.

That the human animal just is not capable of the lengths to which you are

professing to go. And when you profess it, you have to be willing to back it up.

And you have to put yourself on that marsh knowing in no uncertain terms,

...