Like many best friends, George is jealous of Randy. Randy works as successful video game designer. George, an aspiring video game tester, longs for the connections his friend has. George works at Blockbuster, renting to customers the games Randy makes.

George is jealous because he does not understand why Randy is successful and he is not. George tries hard but fails. He wants to do more with his life than work at Blockbuster but he cannot catch a break. His ship will not come in.

George asked his friend why this was.

Randy sat him down. "You're not very disciplined."

This was not the answer George was looking for. "I am too," he insisted.

"No. You're not. You give up too easily. Things don't go like you planned, and you get discouraged and give up."

George did not know how to respond. Randy's observation hurt, but only because he knew Randy was right. "So how do I fix it, then?"

"You have to be strong. Don't give in so easily. Tell you what. You want a better job, right?"

George nodded.

"So," Randy said, "lock yourself in a room for 4 hours with only your resume. You can't do anything else besides write in your notebook and work on your resume."

"But I do that! I try to work on that, but I get distracted."

"This is what I meant. You give up too soon. Look. In a 6 hour work day, you might not hit your stride until hour 2, or even hour 3. But if you give up after the first hour, you'll never know."

This made sense to George. After all, he was a long distance runner. He would never think of stopping after only running a mile. And so he was able to transfer his athlete mentality to his work, and followed his dream to the top of the video game heap.