Super Performers

A book published in America in 1986, entitled Peak Performers, makes a study of the lives of a number of individuals in modern America who have played a heroic role in life. One point which the writer especially emphasizes is that a great mission can trigger in a person the powerful urge to superior effort which ultimately leads him to exceptional achievement.

America sent its first manned spacecraft to land on the moon in 1967. The launching of the rocket had been the result of the combined effort of a large number of experts who had been engaged to work for this mission. One member of this team, a computer programmer, said that something extraordinary began to happen as the work got under way. Thousands of ordinary men and women, who were working to bring the space programme to fruition, had all of a sudden been transformed into super achievers. They had started performing with an efficiency that they had never in their whole lives been able to muster.

Within the short period of 18 months, all of the work had been accomplished with exceptional rapidity.

“Want to know why we’re doing so well?” he asked. Pointing to the pale moon barely visible in the eastern sky he said, “People have been dreaming about going there for thousands of years. And we’re going to do it.”

It is an undeniable truth that what inspires an individual more than anything is to have a great mission before him. That is what arouses a person’s hidden potential and makes him capable of all manner of sacrifices. It makes him, in short, a peak performer.

A person who is satisfied no longer strives, doesn’t dream, and doesn’t create. And if we are dominated by fear, we will achieve nothing.