I watched the World Cup final Sunday  in a small restaurant called Los Gallegos with good friends and family.  You can probably guess which colors we were sporting.  It was a tough and evenly matched final.  What a thrill it was to land on the winning side.

As I rested that evening listening to the sportscaster banter back and forth over the game, I couldn’t help but reflect on the massive difference a few seconds made on the game’s outcome.  It took España several seconds in front of the goal and one Andrea Iniesta kick to tilt the score in their favor.  

By my calculation, without counting the extra minutes the referees add (rather randomly I might add) to the end of each half, those guys played hard for 5,400 seconds regular time and 1,800 seconds of overtime.  Yet it was the 5 seconds it took España to beat Holland’s defense determined who would be world champion.

This isn’t anything unique to futból (Sorry: I just had to use the Spanish spelling). If you check out other sports, you’ll notice the same thing.  Tiger Wood’s advantage (even after his complete personal screw up) is less than a stroke per course lower than the next best player.  The marginal difference between the top baseball player’s batting average and that of the next few behind him is negligible.  However, those small differences make a huge difference in earnings, popularity and success by anyone’s measure.

Please keep in mind, the same holds true outside of sports.  Take your job or career for instance.  You can get cynical and believe that the ones that get ahead are the ones that just got lucky, but a big part of getting ahead is being prepared to take that stroke of luck and make something of it.

Are you the kind that sits around waiting for something to just happen or are you preparing yourself so when an opportunity arises, you are the one that catches it?   What are you doing so you are the one people think to call?

Look around to the most successful fellow employees.  Think about the people you know that are most successful.  What is it about them that led to their success?

I think if you do the homework you’ll discover they took the one or two things they were really good at and worked hard to make it even better.  But how much better is enough?

Maybe its how marginally better they are  at taking risks.  Maybe it’s their creativity that enables them to invent one thing that’s valuable and truly unque.  Did they have people skills only a bit better than the next guy yet they they relentlessly put them to use?

If that’s the case and we are willing to work on it, I think every single one of us could be one or two steps away from that one break that makes that massive differenced for us.  And keep in mind, you never seem to know what that break might be.  If we aren’t working to consistently improve ourselves, the very opportunity we need can easily pass us by unnoticed.  Worse yet, it becomes the next guy big break.

For those of you that saw the final, Iniesta’s goal came out of no where.   I’m sure Iniesta wasn’t expecting that one pass to lead to the one that would win the game.  With less than 10 minutes to go in that overtime half, the opportunity presented itself.  And just like with many things in your life, the difference between this year’s World Cup first and second place came down to next to nothing.

Hope this helps!