“Most of us forget the basics and wonder why the specifics don't work.”_Garrison Wynn
The foundational power in anything is found within its fundamentals and nowhere else, as one winner rightly explained: “Everything in life goes back to the basics.”
In other words, nothing matters more than the basics.
Whether the times are great or awful, if we want to take our game to the next level, the best place to look is not a place of complexity but a simple angle of functionality—an area of the basics.
Simple truths are powerful, if we accept them, understand them and then act upon them with vigour and determination as a billionaire investor, Charlie Munger did advise: ‘take a simple idea and take it seriously.”
Get this: simple truths or basic ideas—as essential as they stand— are only a single part of the theme of today’s article. The second and more important part is taking them very seriously.
However, because they can appear quite simplistic, most people rarely take them seriously. But highly effective people think differently about any simple truth. They take simple truths very seriously. And it is this raving fact that separates them from everyone else.
In this direction, I want you to realize that:
It is easy to pay lip service to simple truths.
It is easy to handle simple truths with levity.
And it is very easy not to stick with simple truths for the long haul.
Therefore, if you want to maximize your potential, you must discipline yourself to follow the road less travelled by taking fundamental truths of life, and the simple truths of your profession very seriously.
You see, when I study the work of great masters, whether in arts, sports or science, what I notice is that the most unique thing about them is not in terms of grand acts of sophistication but in the way they commit to fundamental truths of their crafts. They are extremely focused on the core details of their games.
They are extra-ordinary not because they have a gene different from everyone else but because of what they pay attention to: they pay rapt attention to what most of us tend to underrate—the basics.
Winners are uncommon in their mode of executing the basics of their arts. As the saying goes: success comes not from doing extra-ordinary things, but it comes from doing ordinary things in extra-ordinary ways.
With aforementioned, I think it is clear that the only way to remain on top of our game is to never neglect the roots for any reason as a legendary coach, John Wooden did observe:
‘Champions are brilliant at the basics.’ And he continues with the following words:
“There are no shortcuts. If you're working on finding a short cut, the easy way, you're not working hard enough on the fundamentals. You may get away with it for a spell, but (in the long run) there is no substitute for the basics. And the first basic is good, old fashioned hard work.”
If we want to make the most of our potential or overcome any challenge, then we need to flee from complexity and return to simple truths, timeless values and evergreen basics of self-discipline and responsibility.
Finally, understand that the foundation of a sustained growth in life never resides in complexities; it always resides in the simplicity of putting the basics ahead of everything else.
