Unscripted: Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of Entrepreneurship pdfdrive com

~ Bruce Lee, Martial Artist
THE DICHOTOMY: FIXED (99%) VS. GROWTH (1%)
I
n 2004, at the age of twenty-seven, Josh Waitzkin won a world title in Tai Chi
Chuan. He also went on to win thirteen national championships. Later, he’d
become a championship coach, leading his team to several world titles. He’s also
a black belt in Brazilian jujitsu. If this is the first time you've heard about Mr.
Waitzkin and his achievements, you might guess he was born with talent. Or
that’s he’s been practicing martial arts ever since childhood.
In both cases, you’d be wrong.
Josh’s accolades are indeed impressive. However, what’s more impressive is
that Josh's didn't start studying martial arts until he was twenty-one. And before
that Mr. Waitzkin was, let’s just say, more geek than athlete. He was the story
behind the Hollywood movie 
Finding Bobby Fischer
, as he was the only person to
win consecutive chess championships: the National Primary, Elementary, Junior
High, High School, US Cadet, and the US Closed Juniors.
Early in Josh’s childhood, he was labeled “a prodigy,” and one might argue he
was. However, according to Josh, the greatest thing that ever happened to him
was when he lost his first national chess championship. The defeat taught him

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about the psychological traps of definitive, fixed labels—such as “You are
special” and “You are a prodigy”—and how they can create false impressions so
that hard work suddenly becomes optional.
As he put it, “I had felt my mortality,” and after the breakthrough, he would
go on to dominate the scholastic chess scene for the next eight years.
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The point of this story demonstrates just how dangerous 
the special scam
is,
even to a world-class achiever. 
The special scam is a double-edged belief that our
innate talents are enough to accomplish our dreams—OR that our innate talents
are immovable, fixed characteristics immune from improvement.
The special scam
tells us hard work is optional because we’re already awesome, or it’s worthless
because we can't change our skills. Either way, the special scam says, “I wasn’t
born with that kind of talent” or “I’m great; I don’t need to improve.” Both
justify avoiding the grind of improvement.
Compliments of today’s over-coddled and over-selfied culture salted by an
anti-success and anti-competitive media, the special scam has granted us trophy
kids: youngsters born rock stars, awarded trophies for no particular reason;