Great athletes train their muscles to respond with extreme precision even when the rest of their body is fatigued.
A great golfer will often practice a particular swing hundreds of times per day and thousands of times over a year to create a memory for the muscles that make that swing work.
As the golfer perfects the tiniest of details that allow him to place a golf ball wherever he chooses, the muscles that flex and twitch in that process are strengthened.
The better the practice, the better the performance.
Over time, the same muscles are exercised and strengthened. And the golfer develops a subconscious superpower.
Even when tired and stressed, his muscles take over automatically and do what they have been trained to do. He doesn’t need to think about it. He doesn’t need to obsess about it.
He doesn’t need to wonder what’s going to happen. It is almost automatic.
The same is true for the Olympic pole vaulter, a seasoned Southern Baptist preacher, the right forward on a championship soccer team, an elite sales professional, and an amateur runner.
Deliberate practice creates a subconscious superpower.
When things get tough, the body puts on auto-pilot what it has trained and prepared and planned to do.
Which is why it is so important that you develop the right muscles. The right automatic response.
How you practice and what you practice becomes your go-to move when you’re under extreme pressure.
When things get tough, and you’re backed into a corner, you’re going to respond automatically.
Despite how self-aware you think you are or how intellectually agile you might be, when things get tough enough you will automatically revert back to muscle memory.
One of those muscles needs to be hustle.
Fred Smith, a brilliant business thinker, was giving a failing grade by his Yale professor because his idea for FedEx “wasn’t feasible”. Today that idea employees 400,000 employees and generate $50 billions per year in revenue.
R.H. Macy, who had a dream to “Be everywhere, do everything, and never forget to astonish the customer”, went broke seven times trying to make that a reality. His department store would be a permanent fixture in New York City.
Robert Goddard, perhaps the smartest astrophysicist in the world, engineered two hundred failing ideas for rockets before he got one to fly into space. His mistakes cost hundreds of millions of dollars.
Henry Ford, who transformed business innovation, went bankrupt five times before his automobile manufacturing idea started working. His creditors took everything from him along the way.
J.K. Rowling, the highest selling author of modern time, shopped her book thirteen times before a publisher would take a look at the first Harry Potter book. That series of books would end up selling 450 million copies.
Hard work. Tenacity. Determination. Resolve. Sweat. Blood. And tears.
You won’t make it if you don’t know how to grind. You won’t come out a winner if you don’t know how to hustle. If you aren’t committed to doing whatever it takes to achieving greatness.
- When you face repeated failure, you have to hustle.
- When you get told “NO”, you have to hustle.
- When you face financial ruin, you have to hustle.
- When success is unforeseeable, you have to hustle.
- When conventional wisdom says “it would never work”, you have to hustle.
- When you are tired and beat down, you have to hustle.
- When no one believes in you, you have to hustle.
- When you have nothing else to give, you have to hustle.
Like an elite performer, your default decision in the middle of trouble to hustle and grind is what determines your ultimate destiny.
And that, at it’s very simplest, is the superpower of hustle.
When you’re tired, fatigued, and beyond your limit, your muscle memory guides you to do what matters.
You hustle. You work. You grind. You dream. You persist.
You emerge successful.