i wanna be

4th August, Thursday
i admire people who are driven, passionate, perfectionist, hardworking, disciplined. honestly i don't think that talent makes a person successful, in fact in most cases a talented person easily becomes complacent. he may start off in life really well but it doesn't guarantee he'll finish up a roaring success. on the other hand if a person with average talent but is always seeking to improve, has the drive, the passion to do his best he has a very high chance of coming up on top at the end of the day. sometimes i reflect on my own life and i realise that when i'm left to my own i almost always end up churning up something mediocre, and i hate it. i think i've always had this mentality "do the least amount of work to achieve the satisfactory result". if you look at it positively then its called being efficient, but it looks more to me like lazyness, not achieving the best result possible. i read somewhere that there's 2 kinds of people, the first are extrinsically motivated. e.g. monetary reward, punishment, people's opinions. the second group of people are intrinsically motivated. e.g. personal satisfaction, sense of accomplishment. einstein, beethovan, leonardo da vinci, all these great people who were among the best in their field, which group do you think they belonged to? they belonged to the second group. i mean, did any of them end up with big bucks and fame and glory? no doubt they were recognised for their efforts and we remember them till now but were they big superstars in their days? i don't think so. they did the best they knew how, not for monetary reward nor for fame and glory but rather to be the best that they could be, do the most that they could, while they could.

i can say for sure i'm more inclined to being extrisically motivated, though i wish i was the other. sometimes i project myself forward 30 years and wonder what it'd be like. you know what? i'm afraid. afraid that i'd look back with regret that for the years that past, i was content with average, ordinary, mediocre. afraid that i'd regret not studying harder, being more disciplined, taking more initiative, going the extra mile, speaking up more, thinking of other people more....the list goes on. truth is i'm not much satisfied with where i am right now as a person. so much more to learn, so much more to achieve, so much more to strive for. god help me...