Out of the night that covers me,
Black as the pit from pole to pole,
I thank whatever gods may be
For my unconquerable soul.

In the fell clutch of circumstance
I have not winced nor cried aloud.
Under the bludgeonings of chance
My head is bloody, but unbowed.

Beyond this place of wrath and tears
Looms but the Horror of the shade,
And yet the menace of the years
Finds and shall find me unafraid.

It matters not how strait the gate,
How charged with punishments the scroll,
I am the master of my fate:
I am the captain of my soul.

“Invictus” is a poem written in 1875 by English poet William Ernest Henley. The word means “unconquered” in Latin.The last two lines were repeated on several occasions by Morgan Freeman in his performance as Nelson Mandela in the film “Invictus,” about Mandela’s efforts to unite his country around hosting and winning the 1995 rugby World Cup. It was said that Nelson Mandela had this poem written on a piece of paper he kept during his years in a South African prison. According to Mandela, the poem helped him cope with the pain of injustice and imprisonment.

In the movie, Mandela gives the “Invictus” poem to his national rugby team’s captain Francois Pienaar before the start of the Rugby World Cup. In reality, Mandela provided Pienaar with an extract from Theodore Roosevelt’s “The Man in the Arena” speech from 1910. An excerpt of the speech from Wikipedia as below:

It is not the critic who counts; not the man who points out how the strong man stumbles, or where the doer of deeds could have done them better. The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena, whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood; who strives valiantly; who errs, who comes short again and again, because there is no effort without error and shortcoming; but who does actually strive to do the deeds; who knows great enthusiasms, the great devotions; who spends himself in a worthy cause; who at the best knows in the end the triumph of high achievement, and who at the worst, if he fails, at least fails while daring greatly, so that his place shall never be with those cold and timid souls who neither know victory nor defeat.

I hope that the poem “Invictus” can give you the strength to overcome whatever challenges that you may be facing and can inspire you like it has helped Nelson Mandela to survive 27 years in imprisonment.

We started walking intuitively and probably from seeing our parents and other adults doing it; we imitated them. We fell and we picked ourselves up repetitively and fearlessly. Pretty soon we were walking steadily and the daring ones were already running. Through sheer hard work and encouragement, we had not only mastered the art of walking but also doing it with ease. Had we ever questioned the hard work we put into learning to walk?

Are there something which you are hoping to do well? I have an interesting news for you. With hard work and I mean a lot of hard work, you can achieve excellent in what you hope to do well. And not just hard work, “But work of a particular type that’s demanding and painful,” according to a report by CNN on the Secret of Greatness.

“I do not have the innate gifts to be successful.” From the above mentioned report, British-based researchers Michael J. Howe, Jane W. Davidson and John A. Sluboda conclude in an extensive study, “The evidence we have surveyed … does not support the [notion that] excelling is a consequence of possessing innate gifts.” The first major conclusion is that nobody is great without work.

A lot of people are working hard and yet not many are achieving excellent results. Where did it go wrong? The biggest challenge is that most people are just blindly charging ahead. A friend of mine shared his Cycle of Excellence with me a few years back. It is a simple feedback system he uses for his students so that they can constantly monitor their own results through feedbacks. Through the system, the students can pin-point what produces positive results and do more of that.

Besides monitoring which of our hard work produces positive result, a paper published by professor K. Anders Ericsson of Florida State University and two colleagues in 1993 notes, “Elite performers in many diverse domains have been found to practice, on the average, roughly the same amount every day, including weekends.” Thus, we also need to put in consistent hard work.

Many would have spent the weekend otherwise. Not many are willing to go the extra miles and that is why not many can achieve greatness. At least we know now that achieving greatness is not only for the privilege few but available for you and I.

You may ask, “what difference will it make?” I wouldn’t know. But if you know who is Byron Pitts, I believe it made a great deal of difference for him. From CBS News, Byron Pitts was named a contributor to “60 Minutes” and chief national correspondent for “The CBS Evening News with Katie Couric” in Jan. 2009. He had been a national correspondent since February 2006. He was what caught my attention when I read the email from BetterWorldBooks.com yesterday.

Pitts was one of CBS News’ lead reporters during the Sept. 11 attacks and won a national Emmy award for his coverage. Pitts other awards include a national Emmy Award for his coverage of the Chicago train wreck in 1999 and a National Association of Black Journalists Award. He is also the recipient of four Associated Press Awards and six regional Emmy Awards.

And yet a therapist in elementary informed his mother that he could not read. According to The Early Show, Pitts is functionally illiterate at 12 years old and who stuttered until he was 20. Could you imagine him ending up in the field of journalism, let alone a chief national correspondent and a “60 Minutes” contributor?

Pitts attributes his success by being surrounded by “regular folks,” including coaches, teachers, the priest from his high school and his college professors. To Pitts, his mother has always been around to support him and to encourage him in good days and bad days.

Byron Pitts story reminds me of the story I read about Thomas Edison. According to Wikipedia, the young Edison’s mind often wandered, and his teacher, the Reverend Engle, was overheard calling him “addled.” Edison recalled later, “My mother was the making of me. She was so true, so sure of me; and I felt I had something to live for, someone I must not disappoint.” Both were fortunate that there was someone in their lives who believe and have faith in them.

How often have a well-meaning statement done more harm than good? When someone says you cannot achieve something, that person not only limits you to his/her thought, but also prevents you from reaching your potential. The next time when we speak, should we not take care not to kill someone’s dream? Will you be one who will speak words of encouragement or one who will cause the death of a dream?

I hope the story of Byron Pitts will inspire you to overcome the challenges in your life now.

A friend shared this in her Facebook profile a few days back and I thought I will share this with you. Something to ponder on over the weekend. Actually it came at the right time when I was thinking of posting something on failure.

I believe that most of us had suffered failures at several points in our lives; although we may not remember all of them. Do You Remember How You Learned to Walk?

Even before you were trying to learn and walk, didn’t you fall down on your bum first? And for me, the first time when I was learning to swim, I almost drowned. Did you almost drown too? The first bicycle ride, I had bad bruises on my knees. Did you have bruises from bicycle ride too?

Something from the Dark Knight, “Why do we fall, Bruce? So we can learn to pick ourselves up.” Such simple and straightforward truth. More often than not, we have made things complicated through our thoughts and analysis. Should we have just learnt from our lessons and moved on. Do we allow ourselves to fall and then not picking ourselves up?

Thomas Alva Edison did not learn to talk until he was almost four years old and in school, his mind often wandered, and his teacher, the Reverend Engle, was overheard calling him “addled.” And that was the end of official schooling for him.

And yet he went on to become an American inventor, scientist and businessman who developed many devices that greatly influenced life around the world. Edison is considered one of the most prolific inventors in history, holding 1,093 U.S. patents in his name, as well as many patents in the United Kingdom, France and Germany (Wikipedia).

Michael Jordan was cut from the varsity team because he was deemed too short to play at that level. He said, “I’ve missed more than 9000 shots in my career. I’ve lost almost 300 games. Twenty-six times I’ve been trusted to take the game winning shot and missed. I’ve failed over and over and over again in my life. And that is why I succeed.”

Did we just miss how many times Thomas Edison and Michael Jordan had fallen before they raised to greatness? I used to think that they shot to success until I realized how many times they had picked themselves up every time they fell down. As the saying goes, “the greatest glory is not in never falling but picking ourselves up every time we fall.”