 The one thing that'll make you the greatest person in the world. As a little boy, Larry Page has always been dreaming of becoming an inventor. As a teenager, he was busy studying the works and biographies of great inventors who have lived before him. Page was only 12 when he read the biography of Tesla. He noticed how Tesla was a great inventor who failed because he was never an entrepreneur like Thomas Edison. Discovering this, Page decided to not only become an inventor but to also be an entrepreneur. Years later, Page founded Google with Sergey Brain and they ended up being one of the greatest and most valuable inventions of the 21st century. In this video, I'll be sharing with you the one single thing that can make you the greatest person in your generation. If you are new here, consider subscribing so you won't miss other interesting videos like this. Now think about it, what do you think is the single thing that unites everyone who has ever become great in anything? The answer is very simple. The singleness of purpose. The one thing that can make you the greatest human in your generation is for you to identify a single thing you want to live for and focus solely on that. Success isn't enough. Today, if you survey a hundred young people and ask them, what do you want to achieve with your life? Most of them will tell you, I want to be successful. Some will say, I want to be rich. The problem about this answer is that it's vague, not specific and meaningless. This responses are meaningless because what is success? What are riches? Nobody knows. Because there is no generally accepted definition of success, you can't just say, I want to be successful. A Dream Bigger Than You Even when he was a teenager, Muhammad Ali had started calling himself the greatest boxer in the world. No, he wasn't the greatest boxer, there were people before him who were greater than him but that was what he wanted to be and that is what he became. For 12 years old Larry Page, the dream of becoming an inventor was beyond a boy but because he believed he could become an inventor, he started studying the lives of inventors and he ended up being an inventor who gave us the most popular search engine in the world. If you want to become the greatest person in your generation, you've got to pursue dreams that are bigger than yourself and then be willing to sacrifice all you've got to achieve the mighty dreams. Say no to everything else. Look at the lives of the greatest people who ever lived and one thing will be obvious to you, they all lived for a single thing. Today, if someone mentions Steve Jobs, what comes to your mind? A technology genius who builds Apple and other related companies. What can you remember about Warren Buffett? An investor? What about Bill Gates, Max Zuckerberg, Lionel Messi, Tiger Woods, Michael Jackson or Thomas Edison? As I mentioned all these names, a single thing came up in your mind about those people. That single thing is what these people focused all their entire life on and they did it to the extremes. For example, a former coach of Muamed Ali told us a story about him. According to him, Ali would go to the training and have all these beautiful girls all around him but would never give them any attention. They wanted Ali to do well in school but he wouldn't. The only thing he woke up and sleeps to do was to practice as a boxer. In his early days, Michael Jackson was reported to be spending 8 hours every day practicing his music and dances. Tell me how you would practice a single thing for 8 hours every day and you wouldn't be better than everyone in the world. Peter Till told a story about Max Zuckerberg that if you meet Zock anywhere in the day and ask him anything as regards to social network, he will not only answer you, he will give you every study, stats and research as regarding what he is talking about. This is called mastery. If you want to become the greatest person in your generation, you will not only focus your life on a single problem, you'll focus your life on a problem that's bigger than you. You'll not only focus on a problem that's bigger than you, you'll eat, talk, sit and sleep inside such a problem. It will literally become your life. The 10,000 hours Malcolm Gladwell wrote a book called Outliers and shares with us his studies about people who became successful and what we found is that on average, people who become great in any field only become so after they've invested average of 10,000 hours into learning, trying and practicing their crafts. Again, this is called mastery and I'll advise you to read the book with the same title, Mastery by Robert Greene. Have you defined a single thing you want to leave and die for? Are you willing to sacrifice your pleasure, say no to everything else and focus on such thing for the rest of your life? Are you willing to study like no one, research like no one, practice and take action like no one? That's what it takes to become the greatest person in the world. At 21, my parents wanted me to continue schooling and get more degrees. To me, I was too old to be in the classroom because I understood that it might take me a decade or more before I'll become successful as an interpreter. I knew right there that I had to get out of the classroom and start pursuing my dreams. Think about most successful people you know and study to know when they started pursuing their dreams. By age 18, Steve Jobs had already dropped out of school looking for a way to figure out what he would do with his life. By age 19, Max Zuckerberg had started Facebook. Michael Jackson started singing at 5. Tiger Woods started golf as early as age one. Warren Buffett had started investing by age 13. At 20, Bill Gates had founded Microsoft. We can go on to list the names of those who make big impacts in the world and one thing will be obvious and that is they know what they want and start pursuing it early in life. But why is this point so important? You see, it takes time, a lot of mistakes, errors and failures to become successful at anything. While you can go through all these at any age, the older you get, the less you're willing there to go the rough road but as a young person, you're much more likely to try things and have fun even when you fail. Should we then say that if you're over 30, it's over for you? Well, Connell Sanders was 65 when he started Kentucky Fried Chicken and he became a billionaire before he died. You can pursue your dreams even now but no matter how old you are, there are two important things. First, you must have the youthful spirit because it's only the youthful spirit that is adventurous and willing to take risk. The second is, you must be willing to put in more hours, studying, practicing and doing important stuff as related to your dreams. In conclusion, if you want to be the greatest person in your generation, you must identify a single mission for your life and say no to every other thing. You must be willing to put in long hours especially at the beginning and remain determined even when the road gets rough. Thank you so much for watching our videos. Are you between the ages of 15 and 40? Again we invite you to join our new channel which was specially created to share with you inspiration and life's lessons to succeed in life. We call it Under 40 TV. Kindly look at the description box to join the Under 40 TV. We love you