B00CHVIVMY EBOK by Jon Acuff Read Free Book Online Page B

understanding the game in a way most people won’t. If you build on his foundation, you may get to the land of Harvesting a lot faster than other people.
    If you’ve got a parent, mentor, boss, or friend who cleared the way for you, you may be able to stand on the shoulders of a giant. And as Andy Stanley says, you’ll go “further, faster” than you would have on your own.
    3. Work harder and smarter.
    I’ve never met a farmer who was surprised by his crops. Who stood on a front porch, in overalls I’m assuming, and stared out at a crop of blood oranges when he clearly remembered planting soybeans. If you work hard, you tend to expect results. If you decide that you’ll spend ten hours a week on your path to expertise instead of twenty, you’ll get there slower than someone who owns the twenty and gets down to business. If you now want to tweet out, “Hard work pays off, new thought by @jonacuff,” feel free.
    4. Harvest someone else’s fields.
    Gladwell didn’t throw out the 10,000-hour rule as the definitive reason that Bill Gates became Bill Gates. In fact, he argued that “the biggest misconception about success is that we do it solely on our smarts, ambition, hustle, and hard work.” 4 If Gates hadn’t had access to a computer when he was 13, it may have been difficult for him to accumulate 10,000 hours so quickly. He had opportunities other people didn’t necessarily have. Or in other words, he harvested fields he did not plant.
    That happens sometimes in life. You get an opportunity that is beyond what your experience years would dictate. Someone takes a shot on you. Against all logic, a boss believes in you and risks a project under your young lead. A friend has a connection at a record label, and in one relational leap you clear the dozens of hurdles it usually takes for someone to hear your demo.
    There will be moments when you get to harvest someone else’s field and shorten a stage or two. We often call this someone’s “big break.” That’s happening to me right now. When he hired me, Dave Ramsey took me from speaking to crowds of 100 to crowds of 10,000 almost overnight. I didn’t earn my way to that opportunity. Dave spent twenty years building his stage and then graciously invited me to join him on it. When I speak at a Dave Ramsey live event, that’s his harvest that he’s generously decided to share with me.
    Did I plant the fields Dave is letting me harvest right now? Nope. That was a finish line I couldn’t have possibly predicted. Did I come up with the vision to have new brands like me at his company? Nope. Did I, through my hard work, make Dave a generous leader who is humble enough to share the stage with someone who technically hasn’t earned it? Nope.
    But guess where I was when Dave invited me to think about joining his team? At his office. I’d driven up for the third time in two years to speak there. For free. I’d spent years building a brand. I’d spent years writing a blog and a book. I’d spent years hustling and working as hard as I possibly could in the lands of Learning and Editing. Dave didn’t knock on my front door and say, “I’ve never heard of you, but I’m here to change your life with an incredible opportunity.” I’d already kicked down the door of purpose and started traveling the road of awesome when I met Dave. He met me when I was already in motion. My relationship with Dave wasn’t a by-product of luck. Luck is a word people who are lazy use to describe people who are hustling. If you ever taste it in your mouth, spit it out as fast as you can.
    At first glance, two of those ways to accelerate awesome should make you hate me at least a little. “Great! All I have to do to be awesome is start my dream when I was a toddler! Fantastic. I’ll get a time machine. And I need my dad to have been a successful member of the same exact industry I’m curious about. Thanks for the help, Jon!”
    That’s not what I’m saying at all. You don’t