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There are those among us that reach greatness. We notice many of them only after they managed to grab the attention through some impressive achievement. News of these exceptional men and women circulate and make us wonder just how they did it. The easy answers most of us come up with are: “They are naturally talented, otherwise they wouldn’t be standing there, receiving praise”, “They must have had the right connections, so an easy ride to the top was a given”, “That person is an as**le that must have used others and then abandoned them”, “There’s no way you can get to that level without doing something fishy” and so on. These are the reactions that expose our pettiness, weakness of character and mediocre achiever mindset. We judge others without knowing what they went through to get to where they are. In stating this, I don’t deny the existence of terrible people who are willing to walk over bodies to get what they want. I’m trying to shed some light on the inner workings of the minds of those who manage to perform far above average.

Muhammad Ali once said: “I don't count my sit-ups; I only start counting when it starts hurting because they’re the only ones that count.” High achievers are, for lack of a better choice of words, obsessed with what they want. They relentlessly go after their goal and learn not to stop even when they fail. This is a process of transformation, combined with a natural tendency to go against the herd instinct, choices made at the right time and then sticking with those choices. They decide to press on when others tell them to stop when others around him/her stop when common sense tells them to stop. They develop a state of mind that pushes them to move forward even under hardship or stress, under conditions that would make a “levelheaded” person abandon what they’re doing. They are reaching their limits and pushing them because they have realized that what they want is somewhere beyond those limits and the realization that limitations are imaginary boundaries set by men with no desire to overcome them. “When the going gets tough, the tough get going.” Exceptional people live by this expression, some without ever having heard it.

Extraordinary men and women forge themselves in anonymity and seclusion. Champions are made on the training grounds, not on the playing field. When we see an athlete receiving a medal, a scientist receiving recognition for an amazing discovery or a coworker rapidly rising through the ranks, what we actually see is the immense amount of work that they have put in their respective field finally paying off. What we see is just the tip of the iceberg while ignoring the huge mass of work underneath. These people have sunk countless hours in honing their craft, in obsessively looking for the best way to get what they want. They have done that mostly alone, out of the view of the public eye because most of the others, in their opinion, are too lazy and complacent, and hanging out with this kind of people will only slow men and women of action down.

High achievers are always hungry. They absorb information and experience with an increasing appetite, getting irritated at the people they meet along the way that do not share their vision and values. They don’t want people who are bound to hold them back from achieving their dream in their lives, so they tend to cut ties with these people. That gives them a bad reputation for being cold and heartless so they are forced to find refuge in the company of like-minded individuals. They come together just like everybody else, out of a need to be understood, accepted and have their system of values recognized as valid, approved and reinforced.

High achievers are willing to do sacrifices to get what they want. These people live in the present, in the real world, they ponder decisions based on an efficiency-oriented mindset, not an emotional one (because emotions make you hesitate) and are willing to make the hard choices. They will just as easily sacrifice something of theirs as they will sacrifice something that belongs to others in the pursuit of the dream.
As with all things in life, moderation is the key. A thin line separates, for example, a manager making his employees work overtime to reach that quota from a tyrant who overworks his employees without a hint of remorse at the hardships he is putting those people through. This is one of the tightropes they are constantly walking and trying not to fall off because on one side they lose people in the pursuit of progress while on the other they lose progress by allowing people to slack off. The same principle applies to high achievers sacrificing their own time, money and effort. If they push too hard on one side they are sure to lose something valuable on the other. The natural impulse is to keep moving forward but they live in a world where their instincts are not the only thing they have to pay attention to. Their life is a balancing act but because they live above most people, their successes and falls are much more noticeable.

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