I recently read some challenging words by radio talk show host, Hugh Hewitt. He says if you are going to rise in this world, it will take will on your part.

Hewitt, in his book, In, But Not Of, then shares this story:

A French writer on the subject remarked upon the example of a retired colonel on a farm: “The colonel who retires on a farm in the country would have liked to have become a general; but if I could examine his life, I would find some little thing that he neglected to do, that he did not want to do. I could prove to him that he did not want to become a general.” In other words, the colonel did not want to be a general badly enough.

I came across that quote in a book I read in 1980, Ambition by Joseph Epstein, one of the country’s finest essayists. I have placed that anecdote on the table many, many times in front of many, many successful people. Eventually almost everyone comes around to this point of view. Success in the world is pretty much a function of disciplined effort.

I included in my book, A Life of Excellence, a story about President Jimmy Carter and an encounter he experienced as a young naval officer; an event that he says shaped his life. In order to be considered for an officer’s position on a nuclear submarine, the candidate first had to be interviewed and approved by Admiral Hyman Rickover, who at the time was head of the United States Nuclear Navy. Here is how President Carter described the interview:

I had applied for the nuclear submarine program, and Admiral Rickover was interviewing me for the job. It was the first time I met Admiral Rickover, and we sat in a large room by ourselves for more than two hours, and he let me choose any subjects I wished to discuss. Very carefully, I chose those about which I knew most at the time — current events, seamanship, music, literature, naval tactics, electronics, gunnery — and he began to ask me a series of questions of increasing difficulty. In each instance, he soon proved that I knew relatively little about the subject I had chosen. He always looked right into my eyes, and he never smiled. I was saturated with cold sweat. Finally, he asked a question and I thought I could redeem myself. He said, “How did you stand in your class at the Naval Academy?” Since I had completed my sophomore year at Georgia Tech before Annapolis as a plebe, I had done very well, and I swelled my chest with pride and answered, “Sir, I stood fifty-ninth in a class of 820!” I sat back to wait for the congratulations — which never came. Instead, the question, “Did you do your best?”

I started to say, “Yes, sir,” but I remembered who this was and recalled several of the many times at the Academy when I could have learned more about our allies, our enemies, weapons, strategy, and so forth. I was just human. I finally gulped and said, “No, sir, I didn’t always do my best.”

He looked at me for a long time, and then turned his chair around to end the interview. He asked one final question, which I have never been able to forget — or to answer. He said, “Why not?”

I sat there for a while, shaken, and slowly left the room.

This encounter caused Carter to completely alter the direction of his life, and later inspired his best-selling book Why Not the Best? Admiral Rickover’s powerful words to Carter have made me wonder if I have even come close to doing my best in this life, and whether, in reality, anyone ever really does his or her very best? Rickover’s final question to Carter seems very pointed and appropriate: “If you have not done your best… why not?”

Best-selling author and noted business consultant Stephen Covey takes a slightly different approach to confronting this same issue. He poses a series of questions:

What is the one activity that you know if you did superbly well and consistently would have significant results in your personal life? And what is the one activity that you know if you did superbly well and consistently would have significant positive results in your professional or work life? And if you know these things would make such a significant difference, why are you not doing them right now?

Covey concludes there is one primary reason we seldom pursue these activities: We do not consider them with any real sense of urgency. We most likely recognize that they are important but just not pressing. Therefore, we procrastinate, with the justification “I will get to it later.”

I am not sure we fully understand that the important activities of life so often don’t act on us; we must make clear and conscious choices to act on them. This lack of understanding is perhaps why so many of us spend our lives reacting to the urgent demands of life and then wonder why we’re unable to focus on the important activities that will make a significant and lasting difference. As a result, in our day-to-day decision making, the “urgent” seems to dominate over the “important,” and thus we end up with very little personal growth and, at best, a mediocre life.

Richard E Simmons III is the founder and Executive Director of The Center for Executive Leadership and a best-selling author.