There Is Greatness All Around You - Use It
  
       There are many people who could be Olympic champions, All-
  Americans who have never tried. I’d estimate five million people 
  could have beaten me in the pole vault the years I won it, at 
  least five million. Men who were stronger, bigger and faster than 
  I was, could have done it, but they never picked up a pole, never 
  made the feeble effort to pick their legs off the ground to try 
  to get over the bar.
       Greatness is all around us. It’s easy to be great because 
  great people will help you. What is fantastic about all the 
  conventions I go to is that the greatest in the business will 
  come and share their ideas, their methods and their techniques 
  with everyone else. I have seen the greatest salesmen open up and 
  show young salesmen exactly how they did it. They don’t hold 
  back. I have also found it true in the world of sports.
       I’ll never forget the time I was trying to break Dutch 
  Warmer Dam’s record. I was about a foot below his record, so I 
  called him on the phone. I said, “Dutch, can you help me? I seem 
  to have leveled off. I can’t get any higher.”
       He said, “Sure, Bob, come on up to visit me and I’ll give 
  you all I got.” I spent three days with the master, the greatest 
  pole vaulter in the world. For three days, Dutch gave me 
  everything that he’d seen. There were things that I was doing 
  wrong and he corrected them. To make a long story short, I went 
  up eight inches. That great guy gave me the best that he had. 
  I’ve found that sports champions and heroes willingly do this 
  just to help you become great, too.
       John Wooden, the great UCLA basketball coach, has a 
  philosophy that every day he is supposed to help someone who can 
  never reciprocate. That’s his obligation.
       When in college working on his masters thesis on scouting 
  and defensive football, George Allen wrote up a 30-page survey 
  and sent it out to the great coaches in the country. Eighty-five 
  percent answered it completely.
       Great people will share, which is what made George Allen one 
  of the greatest football coaches in the world. Great people will 
  tell you their secrets. Look for them, call them on the phone or 
  buy their books. Go where they are, get around them, talk to 
  them. It is easy to be great when you get around great people.
  
                       By Bob Richards
                       Olympic Athlete
                from Chicken Soup for the Soul 
         Copyright 1993 by Jack Canfield and Mark Victor Hansen