Give him a boat load of money
Part of the New Guinea Commerce Winners Don’t Cheat Series.
By Sean Jacobs
‘If you ever want to see someone be great at what they do,’ says the NBA superstar Kevin Garnett, ‘give them a boat load of money or anything they wish for and see if they go at it the same way as if they didn’t have anything.’
In school I can recall the painful and sweaty experience of hiking up hills on school camps. With maps and compasses in hand we’d clamber to the top of a hill and, thinking we were at the summit, almost collapse at the sight of another hill before us. This, our smiling instructor advised us, was a ‘false crest’.
It’s the perfect term, when leaving school, for staring at the path ahead of you and calculating success. If only, I remember thinking, I could just reach a certain income or get a job then all my problems would be solved. My friends and I believed that whatever sign of success it was – a car, winning a competition, a high paying job, a qualification or a girlfriend – if we could just get to a certain stage then it’d all be okay. We would’ve ‘arrived’, we thought, and our problems would’ve abated.
New Guinea Commerce 