The Difference between them N'US

Borrowed the NUS slogan because I thought it was so creative. But it will be used to illustrate what I am trying to say later on. The difference people who make it and the people who don't. What separates all of us? Coming from someone who spends half his time at work MSN-ing, I feel that if you actually made it to this point, do yourself a favour and turn a blind eye and a deaf ear to whatever I have to say next.

Courage. Obviously courag is not the only factor but I'd like to elaborate more on it. Courage in this context doesn't mean the ability to do something heroic. Courage here is in fact the converse whereby own dares to actually fail. Whats the difference between people who know how to cycle and the people who don't? More often than not, the people who do know how to cycle have in fact fallen numerous times before succeeding while those that do not dare to fall do not know how to cycle. Simple.

The difference between greats and the rest. The great people don't really give a damn what everyone around them thinks. That takes courage. Too many times in my life I admired people for daring to do things I have never dared doing. Admired them for possessing qualities which I never had. Tiger Woods perfect drive, Roger Federers sublime volley. I wondered whether he really cared what all of us thought when he decided to change his golf swing 2 years back.

Maybe its just my life. I'm blessed because I learned many things the easy way yet cursed because at the same time I never really learned to learn (through failure). Before one can handle success, one must learn to handle failure. The people with idealistic dreams in life get shattered very early on when they realized that maybe the world wasn't such a nice place afterall. Yet it is the people who have went through hell and came back from it that learns to understand the simplest things in life. And really, perhaps it is the simplest things in life that really matter.

Whatever fails to kill you will make you stronger. I'm not going to delve into the argument. Assume that it holds true for all manner of interpretation. I think the question is how far are you willing to let yourself fall in order to succeed.

And I think thats the difference between them (successful people) and us. You, and me.