I liked Andy Murray (I like Andy Murray), or at least the public persona and the vision that I see of him.
I don't know how he talks to his wife, really, or his kids, but I think it's nice.
What I know is that when he was playing tennis, from a young teenager, he never had time for anything else apart from tennis.
When he was at his peak, at world number one, he had very little time for his family, very little time to walk his dogs, very little time.
I only pick Andy Murray because I like him, but there are any number of people that you can do this with; there are any number of disciplines.
I made a list; it goes like this:
Michael Jordan, Freddie Mercury, Michael Jackson, Winston Churchill, Mother Teresa, Margaret Thatcher.
Take your pick, take your winners, take your losers.
The key is this:
The great ones know about focus, and they can and they will, and they do achieve focus.
They wake up in the morning, and they know what they are for, and they do it, and very little gets in the way, at least for the time that they're doing it.
Einstein had a wardrobe full of the same clothes, so that he could get up, not think about what clothes to wear, and focus, straight in, on you go.
Eat the same breakfast every day, do the same training plan every week, never, ever, ever have 2 pints late on so that you can't go swimming in the morning (that's what I would do). I know that if I were to run purposely every second day from now for a year, I would be sensational.
I know if I don't drink or eat sugar, and run twice and run every second day, I will be amazing, but I'm just not prepared at the moment, at least to make the sacrifice that that takes.
To create the focus and the focused area that it takes to be what I would consider incredible, at least for me, and so lies the paradox.
Happiness is not the person who has the focus. If you listen to Andy Murray, he was not at his happiest when he was winning the tennis games; he's much happier now.
It's who is prepared to make the sacrifice, and at the moment, I'm not prepared to make it.
What happens with me is I work in bursts and fits; all of a sudden, I am prepared and off I go, but the great ones, they're always prepared.
They're always prepared to live the life and to sacrifice all of the other things, the ‘fun’, the relationships, stability, the understanding of other people.
Well, because, well, they want to be great.
It's interesting, isn't it? I don't think that the Pursuit of happiness almost ever goes hand in hand with the pursuit of greatness.
Blog Post Number - 4626