Passion and Paul Potts

The other night I was digging around in other people’s old blog posts, catching up on things I never read but should, and I found this gem on “Seth Godin’s blog”:sethgodin.typepad.com/.

paul_potts.jpg

“Watch it on YouTube”:http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1k08yxu57NA and then come back here.

Maybe the video and show is old news to everyone else, but I was stunned. A seemingly unremarkable man, by his own admission lacking confidence, the judges and audience clearly expecting the worst, expecting humiliation.

And then he is transformed. He nails it.

I consider myself reasonably competent, but not great, at what I do. My weakness is that I have my hands in too many unrelated projects to ever master one thing. The areas I am most passionate about receive a cruel pittance of attention. Not so with Paul Potts.

It’s inspiring to see someone who is just freakin' good, rising above expectation out of a bland job to surprise and overwhelm everyone around him.

Oh, and the nice thing about discovering this video late? I can fast-forward to the finish. “Here’s the winning performance”:www.youtube.com/watch with some additional backstory.

Manton Reece @manton