When someone becomes really great at what they do, it almost always because they spent years dedicating themselves to it. Pete Rose didn’t just wake up one day as a great ball player, he dedicated his life to being a great ball player. Tori Murden didn’t just hop into a boat one day out of the blue and row across the ocean – it took her three tries before she made and countless hours of preparation and training.
Back in the late eighties Meryl Streep stared in a movie called Ironweed. She played a ragged derilect that died in a cheap motel room. For more than half an hour before the scene she hugged a bag of ice cubes in an agonizing attempt to discover what it was like to be a corpse. When the cameras came on she just laid there as Jack Nicholson cried and shook her limp body. The just laid there for take after take and in between take too. One of the crew members got scared and went the director and said, What’s going on? She’s not breathing!” When the director looked at her he saw no signs of life, but he let the camera keep rolling. After the scene was done and cameras were off she still didn’t move. It took ten minutes for her to come out of the state she had sunk herself into. The director was amazed and said, “Now that’s acting!! That is an actress!” She was willing to go the extra
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