“Don’t ever, ever, believe anyone who tells you that you can just get by, by doing the easiest thing possible. Because there’s always somebody behind you who really wants to do what you’re doing. And they’re going to work harder than you if you’re notworking hard.” -Maria Bartiromo

People generally have these huge dreams and visions of success. We want that big house, that big position, that yellow Lamborghini, that positional authority and power but we don’t really think about the work that’s needed to get us there and the ability that’s needed to focus on what is essential and stay in the moment and reach those goals in the whatever set time period and to be able to dig in and do the work that’s needed when no one’s watching us.

We have really forgotten the idea of putting in our time and effort. Every one of us wants to know the hacks, or the cheat codes, or what the secret formula to success is and there are plenty of people out there who are even selling it out. And there is no such thing as secret hacks to success.

And there is no such thing as an overnight success. People get called this when they haven’t been a known name on whatever scene and then have a huge success. We might hear about how a particular guy just came on the scene and boom, like all of a sudden, millions of articles about them and they’re everywhere, but what we don’t see is what took them there. When we say Jeff Bezos, we see the man on the Forbes Richest Men List, we don’t see the picture of Jeff Bezos in a little office in his garage with Amazon spray-painted on a piece of cardboard. We always fail to see the years of work that had taken for them to grow from such humble beginnings to where they are today. The trial and error that has brought them to that point. The long hours that took them to perfect what we finally see.

Many people who post on social media that they want to become a CEO and famous, they get frustrated and they quit, because they don’t actually have the ability to get down on the dirt and do the work that requires. They are after the fancy titles and the Lamborghini; they aren’t ready to do the actual work it takes. But the truth is there is no way other than patience, persistence and hard work to succeed. This is a step that we can’t skip in the path to success. If we skip it, hand over heart I promise you, we aren’t going to make it to the top and even if we do, we will be on the top only for a short period of time.

We hear it all the time how hard work leads to success but do we really work hard? Let’s be honest with ourselves. Have we been giving our best efforts when it comes to achieving our goals? When I say hard work, I’m talking about the way how Bill Gates, Steve Jobs and many more notable people worked. Steve Jobs says “I’ve read something that Bill Gates said about six months ago. He said, ‘I worked really, really hard in my 20’s.’ And I know what he means because I worked really, really hard in my 20’s too. Literally, you know, 7 days a week, a lot of hours every day. And it actually is a wonderful thing to do, because you can get a lot done.”

Greatness and extraordinary success isn’t handed to anyone; it requires a lot of hard work. The best people in any field are those who devote the most hours to whatever craft that they are working on so we can become one of the best people in our field too. If we are willing to put in the effort, it will definitely pay off. I would like to end with a quote by Colin Powell, former U.S. Defense Secretary: “A dream does not become reality through magic; it takes sweat, determination, and hard work”