Take your natural talents to the next level with hard work, passion, and sacrifice.

Instructions

• Step 1: Thrive on and seek feedback. If you don't get better, you may stop caring.
• Step 2: Focus on a role model and measure yourself through their accomplishments and advice, as you strive for greatness. Show your gratitude and appreciation by taking the lessons to heart.
• Step 3: Toughen up with every setback. Pick yourself up, dust yourself off, and get back on the track to greatness.
• FACT: Richard Branson, a poor student without any exceptional characteristics, published a magazine at 16, afterward expanding into a record mail-order business. He is now the 245th richest person in the world.
• TIP: Few performers were ever born with a special, early aptitude. To paraphrase a quote by Thomas Edison, greatness is two percent inspiration and 98 percent perspiration.
• Step 4: Raise the stakes and drive further. Train your instincts until they take over, turning off the brain to avoid over-thinking.
• Step 5: Refine your talent by reaching beyond your objective, elevating your competence by increments. Use feedback and analysis, but especially high levels of repetition, to get better.
• TIP: The elite performer will practice, condition, study, and learn hours beyond the average person, constantly refining what they do.
• Step 6: Lock in on the power of positive thinking to protect yourself from destructive tendencies. Learn from disappointments. Be aggressive and develop a superior mental attitude that wards off any impulse to relax instead of staying the course.
• Step 7: Expect that to achieve greatness in life, whether in athletics, politics, competition, marketing, or business, it takes 10 years, on average, to reach world-class standing.