Are you the best?  The best at what, you might ask, to which I would respond: it really does not matter. People that are highly successful are usually the best in their field of endeavor.  If you want to be highly successful here is a surefire formula that will get you there:  Find something that you are passionate about – something that you really love doing and that you would probably do anyways even if there was little of no pay involved.  Then work very, very hard at the being at the top 1% in that field – that my friends, is a formula for success.

Notice that I didn’t say anything about the nature of the field.  It doesn’t really matter whether you focus on business, the professions, the arts, or sports.  If you can be the best, you will be successful.  To be the best you need to be in the top 1% of your field.  And the closer you get to being the absolute best, the better.

Some people are lucky enough to have natural talents.  But as described in detail in the book Talent Is Overrated: What Really Separates World-Class Performers from Everybody Else, people that achieve the very top of their field often do so through plain hard work.  To be the best you need to practice, day in and day out.  And we are not just talking any kind of practice, we are talking about painstakingly difficult and sometimes exhausting, deliberate practice.  We will not get into the specifics of what constitutes deliberate practice here – check out the Talent is Overrated book for a more in-depth discussion on this subject.

I will be frank with you.  Being the best is not easy.  It takes hard work.  It takes dedication.  It consumes your life.  That is why the very first criteria for pursuing a field in which you want to be the best is that you need to be passionate about it.  What is the point of consuming your life with something you don’t enjoy?  If you don’t love it, chances are that you will give up early during the pursuit of excellence – there is only so much pain people are willing to inflict on themselves.

But if you love it, then everything changes.  Even the pain can feel good.  If I can draw a parallel to a weight training session, it is like the burn that makes your muscles grows.  Yes, it hurts, and it burns.  But at the end of a heavy workout with weights you feel great.  You get satisfaction from knowing that you are growing.

Being the best gains you respect.  But it also requires responsibility.  When you are the best in your field you are looked at as a role model, and you behavior is very closely watched.  It is heartbreaking to see a role model loose the trust and respect of their admirers, and unfortunately that seems to happen much more often these days when anyone that is a public figure is closely scrutinized by the media.

But even if you don’t become the best, for some just the fact that they do what they love is enough to make them happy.  Success is a pursuit, not a destination, and as long as you are getting satisfaction in your pursuit, that may suffice.  Success and Happiness can be complimentary, but sometimes one comes without the other.  The key is to find what works for you.