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The Winning Edge
One
of the most highly anticipated events at the Summer Olympics is the men's 100
meters. The winner of this quadrennial event can lay claim to being the fastest
man in the world. At the 2004 Games in Athens, American Justin Gatlin ran a
blistering 9.85 in the final heat to win the gold. The
silver medalist, Portugal's Francis Obikwelu, ran 9.86.
Yes, that's one
one-hundredth of a second slower - a very Slight Edge.
Do you know what makes the difference between a .300-hitting baseball star with
a multimillion-dollar contract and a .260-plus player making only an average
salary? Less than one additional hit per week over the course of the season.
And you know what makes the difference between getting that hit and striking
out? About one quarter-inch up or down the bat.
No golf fan who watched the 2004 Master's tournament will ever forget how it
ended: Phil Mickelson, winner of more tournaments over the past ten years than
anyone else, with the exception of Tiger Woods, was left with a twenty-foot putt
on the eighteenth hole of the final round. Miss it, even by one inch, and he
would head into a playoff with the number two player in the world, Ernie Els.
Make it, and he would finally silence the critics and win his first major. The
putt rolled in and Mickelson had his green jacket.
Over the course of the tournament's four days, Mickelson shot a 279, six strokes
better than two-time Master's champion Bernhard Langer did. The difference? One
and one half strokes per day better than Langer does. The Slight Edge.
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The average margin of victory for the last 25 years in all major golf
tournaments combined was less than three strokes! |
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And it's not just in sports. It's in everything.
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At 222 water is hot. At 212 degrees, it boils. And with boiling water comes
steam. And steam can power a locomotive.
One extra degree... makes all the difference. |
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In 1998, a book called The Millionaire Next Door, by Thomas J. Stanley
and William D. Danko, became a runaway best-seller. What so amazed readers was
the fact the people profiled in the book were incredibly ordinary, everyday
sorts of folks, with normal and even mediocre-level jobs, who had created
extraordinary wealth by a truly remarkable, unexpected, amazing strategy. It
consisted of-you guessed it. Doing little, mundane, ordinary, insignificant,
everyday things with their money.
If you had followed any of those people around for the twenty or thirty or forty
years during which they were amassing their financial empires, I promise you, it
would not have been breath-takingly exciting-no more exciting than it would be
to follow an Olympic athlete in training every day from his 3:30 A.M. wake-up
call to his exhausted collapse into bed at night.
We love rags-to-riches stories and underdog-becomes-hero stories, and we use
them to motivate people because they are so exciting and dramatic...aren't
they?
Actually, no. The truth is they're not exciting at all-when they're really
happening. They only seem dramatic in the retelling. But the reality is that
the rags-to-riches success story person has gotten to where he is be making
mundane, quiet, little Slight Edge decisions and repeating simple
disciplines, day in and day out.
It's not exciting to read about: it's not exciting to make a movie about. It's
not even exciting to do.
But believe me, it sure is exciting when you finally get to experience the
results.
No matter in what arena in life or work or play-the difference between winning
and losing, the gap that separates success and failure, is so
slight, so subtle, most never see it.
Superman may leap tall buildings a single bound. Here on earth, we win though
the Slight Edge.
Create your success,
Jeff Olson
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At the Indy 500... The average margin for victory for the past 10 years has been
1.54 seconds.
On average the winner took home $1,278,813. The second place prize was 621,321
-- a difference of $657,492. |
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© 2006 by Jeff
Olson. All Rights Reserved.
