In 1896, two brothers named Orville and Wilber Wright had a preposterous idea.

“What if we could be the first ones to create manned flight?”

There was no reason to believe that the brothers would be successful. They had no formal education in engineering. They had no experience with any kind of aviation. And they had no financial backing – only the meager profits from their bicycle repair business.

They were also competing against the best and brightest minds in the country.

“What am I doing wrong?!”

Thought the world-class missionary and linguist, Daniel Everett.

He had been sent deep into the heart of the Amazon jungle to teach Christianity to a tribe known as the Piraha. [1]

The Piraha language has been called THE hardest to understand on the planet. It seems to have no grammar structure to it, no alphabet, and one phrase has incredibly different meanings.

Carol is in one of the most universally dreaded positions - she is about to give a public speech.

Her palms are sweaty. She can feel her knees trembling. She begins to look down on her notes, then up at the stage where the spotlight is on the person introducing her. Her heart feels like it is about to completely beat out of her chest.

How is she supposed to go up and talk in front of all of these people?!

She is certain that she is going to make a mistake, miss a key part of her speech and have the entire crowd ridicule her. It feels as if she fears the next 30 minutes more than any other 30 minutes she has ever faced in her life.

“Sleep?! Sleep is for people who are broke. I don’t sleep. I have an opportunity to turn a dream into a reality.” – Curtis “50 Cent” Jackson 

I think about that quote every time I am up late working, and realize that I have more work than hours that I planned to stay awake. I know the extraordinary value that sleep has on my willpower, but when I want to keep working, I just think about that quote.

Then I turn to other anecdotal stories about people achieving greatness through a lack of sleep and strong willpower to overcome their body’s natural urge to sleep and persevere toward their dreams.

It has been called the most difficult language to understand on the planet. 

In the second half of the 20th century, Missionaries have gone deep into the jungle of the Amazon to try to bring God’s message to a tribe known as the Piraha. Many have been driven half mad in their attempts to learn their language that seems to have little structure or methodology to it [1].