CHAPTER TWELVE
HARD WORK AND PAIN
On reading Ashlee Vance's biography of Elon Mask one of the great modern day entrepreneurs and the man behind PayPal, Tesla Motors, SpaceX, and Solar City; you quickly see that his success is not about skill alone, but huge amounts of courage, persistence and pain. In the chapter on Pain, Suffering and Survival, Vance quotes one of the Tesla and SpaceX investors and Musks friends, he saw a man who arrived in the United States with nothing, who had a lost childhood...who had the ability to work harder and endure more stress than anyone I have ever met. What he went through in 2008 would of broken anyone else ...butHe kept working and stayed focused.
Elon Musk
You may be the most educated, knowledgable person in the world but without a strong work ethic and the disciplines of success, you could simply be whats known as, an educated fool. To be a successful entrepreneur you will experience extreme pain. Character is the steel-like internal strength to be able to withstand large amounts of pain. Great athletes must break through multiple pain barriers in order to reach another level. This is reality and it dose sucks, but the right kinds of discipline can turn into the pleasure of winning and a habit of success. However, once stretched you never go back to your original shape or size, you become a bigger person.
Working hard gives you a special kind of victory; self-control. King Solomon in his book called proverbs says, a man without self-control is like a city broken into and left without walls. In early times a city or village without walls was left unprotected and endanger of being overpowered and robbed, again and again, until they could rebuild the walls, which was a slow process. Disciplines of character, like building muscle or walls, takes time and hard work. Without certain disciplines in business we are at risk of loosing everything. We can have a number of these disciplines mastered but have neglected one area, and bring everything crashing down. It all starts with us and our personal character and discipline, which then naturally extents into our business life.
Hard work also gives us another kind of victory, respect for other-selves. Self-respect comes from self-control and self-control is about self-leadership. Leadership over negative emotions, attitudes, voices and the multitude of interruptions the true to take us off course.