by Don Kurz, author of “Do the Hustle – Life Lessons from Studio 54, Championship Lacrosse Field and Boardroom“
There’s an old saying about how life changes after you finish school: B students hire A students, and C students donate libraries.
This is obviously a bit simplistic, but there’s a nugget of truth at the heart of it all: Intelligence is somewhat overrated as a predictor of success because hard work wins every time. People think that being smart is a way to instant wealth. This is not the case.
At the risk of bragging, I’m willing to say that I’m a reasonably smart guy – but I’m certainly not smarter than everyone around me. However, I don’t to have to be smarter than everyone else because there is a more reliable way to compensate for one’s intelligence, and that is honest, hard work.
Don’t get me wrong; I’m not saying that natural gifts like intelligence and athletics don’t matter or that they don’t provide an important advantage. In sports, for example, when you reach the top, you cannot rely solely on the superior work of everyone. If it takes you five seconds or more to go 40 yards and you want to be a wide receiver, you’re not going to play professional football, no matter how hard you work. And there’s an equivalent obstacle in the business world: If your IQ is below 100, no matter how hard you try, you’ll probably never be CEO of a Fortune 500 company.
So it’s not just about who works the hardest. It’s about who works the hardest and gets results. You might work hard and not get results, either because you’re not smart enough or because you don’t listen to the market and keep getting into dead ends. Working hard is not a way to achieve anything: it is necessary, but not sufficient.
So yes, natural benefits matter. But an advantage can be wasted if you don’t have the courage to do the hard work of maximizing it.
A correlation with the physical disadvantage of athletes
I played lacrosse in high school. I’m not a big guy, and being on the smaller side and trying to compete in contact sports was, let’s just say, humbling at times. If you’re a big man, they look at you and say, “Oh, this guy is six-foot-two, 220 pounds, and reasonably fast, so we’re going to find every way to get him on the field.”
I think that was a driving force for me. When you don’t have such an advantage, you have to show that you are tougher and not make mistakes. You do everything you need to do, because five-foot-eight guys don’t. to have to put on the ground. So I did what I thought to have TO DO.
I loved the game, but loving the game isn’t enough, especially if you don’t have the physical gifts of height and weight that would give you an advantage. So I had to work harder to compensate. I didn’t like having to train relentlessly with weights, wind sprints, pole drills, etc., but I loved the end result.
Luck plays a role in success, but only marginally
Many people believe that most or all of their problems stem from something beyond their control: who your parents were, whether you had money growing up, what school you attended, et cetera. They think that “no matter how hard I work or what I do, I won’t make it because the other guy has had all the advantages and isn’t fair.”
This classic victim mentality is the antithesis of “I’m going to outwork everyone.” At its core, there is the idea that the other does not deserve their success and that their happiness therefore constitutes a kind of injustice. He didn’t deserve it; he’s just lucky.
Certainly, luck plays a role in success. Some people are born rich, and while many work hard to retroactively “earn” their luck, many others do not. For the majority of us who weren’t born rich and had to work hard to succeed, we too depend on at least a little bit of luck every now and then. There are also poor people who are lucky enough to have a fantastic teacher who mentors and guides them throughout their youth. This is fortunate for them, even if the circumstances of their birth were not.
But you can’t just be a resentful, willful victim. It’s unhealthy and unnecessary. The truth is that life isn’t fair. There may be reason to say, “I haven’t had as good luck as someone else.” » But so what? I’m not six foot three, so I’ll never be able to play professional football. That’s not fair, I guess.
Some people take resentment even further and develop the feeling that anyone who is more successful than them must have achieved their success dishonestly – or at least unfairly in some way. Many subscribe to the idea that “behind every great fortune there is a crime.” If you’re okay and I’m not, then you must have cheated.
Are some people more ruthless and fierce? Absolutely. Are any of them sneaky? Absolutely. But I don’t see that cheating is a way to get ahead. The world is largely a meritocracy, and while some people are born smarter and some people have better relationships or have an advantage, I truly believe that if you work hard enough and have a little luck, you can achieve virtually anything within the range of your abilities.
You have no say in what kinds of advantages you are born with. You can’t control how rich your parents are, or how tall you are or how coordinated you are. You cannot control some hereditary predispositions to weight gain or depression.
Your destiny is in your hands
But you can control how hard you work, and that counts for a lot. Do other people have natural advantages like intelligence, money, or nepotistic connections? Of course. Once again, life isn’t fair. You have to accept it and move on, because the only thing you can control is your effort.
As famous author and marketing guru Seth Godin said: “Even though luck may be more attractive than effort, you cannot choose luck. Effort, on the other hand, is completely available, at any time.”
You can control whether you exercise. You can control what you eat. You can control your work ethic through discipline and passion and focusing on your end goal.
If your end goal is to be a starter on the team, if your end goal is to be reasonably successful, if your end goal is to graduate in the top 10 percent of your class, you can control to a large extent what makes that happen or not happen. No matter what obstacles you may face, you are in control of your efforts, your work ethic, and how you treat others.
My message to you is this: never forget that you control your own destiny.
Don Kurz is an entrepreneur, former championship lacrosse player, and dance instructor who learned to dance the Hustle at Studio 54. He has been a senior partner at a major international consulting firm, successfully listed a company on the Nasdaq, launched a hedge fund, and is currently Chairman of the Board and principal shareholder of leading creative agency Omelet LLC. His new book, “Do the Hustle – Life Lessons from Studio 54, Championship Lacrosse Field and Boardroom“, is a both a fun and serious collection of lessons learned, taught to readers through his dynamic life story. Learn more about don.kurz.author.com.
