Fifteen months later, the “I Voted” sticker still adorns my desk lamp – a subtle reminder that all things are possible.
Whether you are fond of the man or are instead breathlessly counting down the days until Election Day 2012, it’s hard to deny that President Obama is one impressive individual.
I like the sound of that, President Obama.
What must it have felt like on the evening of the election when the counting was done? Did he think of all of the steps he had taken to bring him to this place? As a schoolboy, had he allowed himself to dream such a dream while doing his homework?
I’ve never run for office, published a book, gone to law school, or sought a job that guaranteed that I would be disliked by about half of the people all of the time, but that doesn’t mean that I can’t take something away from his story.
By no means is Obama the only example of achievement – although he is one of the more high-profile ones. If we exclude reality stars and others who seem to have merely stumbled upon good fortune, the rest of the world generally adheres to a recipe for success. Some of the ingredients are: determination, planning, study, and, of course, hard work.
This is not a new recipe, although many folks opt to allow the success cookbook to gather dust on a shelf. They believe that there are other, much easier, paths to success. Perhaps there are, how else could we explain Joe the Plumber, Levi Johnston, or Carrie Prejean?
Becoming an inadvertent media sensation notwithstanding, most of us are probably better off sticking to the recipe. And as anyone who cooks knows, meals don’t always come out the way we plan, but we don’t stop eating because of it.
Author Bio:
Ray Colon has written 136 posts on Ray's Blog.
He works with numbers for a living, but don't judge - boring accountants need love too. His blog has no niche (unless writing about things that are important to him is a niche). Some folks cringe when he gets “all political” on them, but he does it anyway when he's in that kind of mood. Sometimes, he writes something nice about someone, but you shouldn't get used to that. His first book, the one he hasn't written yet, is not available on Amazon. Subscribe to Ray's Blog via RSS or Email.
{ 2 comments… read them below or add one }
Carrie Prejean deserves to have her crown. She is beauiful and is also entitled to her own opinion about gays. |
Hi Joe,
Thanks for your comment. I don’t believe that I implied that Carrie Prejean was not deserving of her crown. However, that achievement alone does not account for the level of name recognition that she attained. I’d wager that the average person could not name the three prior winners of that crown. Her notoriety was not due to her achievement, rather it was a result of her comments — which had nothing to do with the hard work I wrote about. Ray