Last night was the Grand Finale of this season’s American Idol. Once the votes were counted, Kris Allen was crowned the new Idol.
He’s a great singer and seems like an all-around nice guy. He really came into his own over the course of this season. There were so many really good singers in the group, including Adam Lambert who seemed to be the odds-on favorite.
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Hear George & Mary-Lynn discuss today's topic on The Bigg Success Show! To listen while you read, click the purple player: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download___
The ten-year rule
One of the challenges we have in reaching bigg success is thinking that it happens overnight. American Idol certainly gives that impression. After all, how many people had heard of Kris Allen five months ago?
Not many. However, he did a lot of work out of the spotlight to get to this point. He’s had formal training and been singing for about sixteen years.
So although it may seem that he’s an overnight sensation, a lot of blood, sweat and tears led to his crowning achievement.
That’s usually the case in any field. In fact, psychologists talk about the ten-year rule: it takes roughly ten years to develop the skills needed to reach bigg success in any endeavor.
The cost of thinking it’s a gift
While the debate rages on – is it natural talent or developed skills – there’s more and more evidence that hard work, with focus, over a span of time, is what usually produces the extraordinary successes we see.
In our culture, we see people like Kris who become media darlings overnight. So there’s a tendency to think he just has that certain something.
The problem with buying into that thought-process is that you lose your resiliency in the face of adversity. If you think that bigg success just happens, you’ll be more likely to give up when things don’t come easy. And you know it don’t come easy!
There’s more than one 3 o’clock in a day
We recently attended SOBCon, the business school for bloggers, and met Jon Haydon. Jon had a great blog post about seeing his social media idol, Chris Brogan, speak at the conference. Chris is an idol to a lot of people including us.
For those of you who don’t know who Chris is, first of all – he’s a super person. Second, he has reached the heights of influence in social media circles everywhere you look – from Ad Age to Technorati and beyond.
Jon’s post was fantastic. He got a number of great comments. We found one particularly revealing. It was by Lewis Howes, who we also met at SOBCon. Lewis commented about a conversation with Chris, who said that “he stayed up until 3:00 every morning for four years to get to where he is!”
At SOBCon, we heard Chris asked about how he got started. He said it goes back ten years to the early days of chat rooms.
Lewis added in his comment, “He didn’t just pop up out of no where and ascend to the heavens … No! He worked his butt off every day and didn’t let others hold onto his string.”
Well said! Bigg success takes time and hard work. It doesn’t just happen overnight. It won’t be easy. Just keep the faith and keep on plugging … you will be a bigg success!
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Please join us next time when we discuss a fun way to clear out the clutter. Until then, here’s to your bigg success!
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(Image in today's post from American Idol)
A one. A two. A three. Take me out to the ball game …
