“Where the heart is willing, it will find a thousand ways. Where it is unwilling, it will find a thousand excuses.”
~Arlen Price
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“Even Michael Jordan had a coach; don’t be too smart to accept advice.”
– anonymous
Do you live your life in mediocrity, staying with what you know, remaining in your comfort zone because you know you already have that figured out, or do you push yourself to your limits, trying something new, risking possible failure, but always reaching for a little bit more?
Everyone likes sucess. When you do something well it’s easy to smile and pat yourself on the back. So why do we get cozy and stagnant? Once we make the climb we reach the plateau, but then what? Do you stay there? I hope not!
How about basking in your glory for a moment and then setting up for the next challenge. You can continue to do well with what you know or push the limits and risk doing “just ok” while you embrace a new skill. Soon that too will become easy, and should again become part of your foundation for the next challenge.
If your always doing well and are acing the challenge, maybe your bar is set too low.
Life gets busy. Work hours change. Kids need your time. The new episode of “Biggest Loser” is on. There is always an excuse to not be active.
Recently when I was in Palm Springs the weather ended up being cooler than expected. So my plan of waking up for a morning hike or run was put in jeopardy. I stayed out later than expected, drank a few extra glasses of wine, and found myself pretty damn comfortable under the covers. But I decided I’d get up and go. I forced myself to get up and go.
Chilly, tired, and with a sore body I made may through the neighborhood to the trailhead. Honestly I was a couple hundred yards into it when I thought about scraping the plan and heading back to crawl into bed.
Then I saw this elderly lady walking in front of me. As I got closer, and eventually passed her, I couldn’t help but notice her effort. We were on level pavement. But she was working so hard to take every step. No walker or cane, just sheer determination. It wasn’t fast progress but she kept moving. You could tell by her body movement that every step was a lot of work.
It made me realize how ungrateful I was being for my health; For my ability to break out into a sprint and cut left and cut right. I’m nowhere near being in Olympic shape but I’m pretty active. My health is overall pretty good. But I know it won’t always be. I’ve had to work through a sore knee to get back into shape. My body gets sore when I over do it. And I see and feel that I don’t heal like I used to.
But you have to use what you have before it’s gone. There are people that would love to have the health, or even the limbs, to be able to do something active. Some use prosthetics to do it. Others, like this little old lady, use mental determination.
Don’t waste the days when you can be active and agile. One day walking across the room may not even be an option.
When you don’t get what you want who’s fault is it? How often do you ever walk away from a failure second guessing yourself and not being able to find one area of improvement ? Most times there is something more you could have done. You could have started preparing earlier. You could have focused more. You could have pushed harder.
There are a lot of times I cut my workout short because I am ready to move on to the next item on my to-do list. Or I push a project to the back burner because something else grabs my interest. Even if we don’t vocalize it, we often prioritize things in our minds simply by our actions. And it will show in our end product. Other times, you will walk away knowing you did absolutely everything in your power to give it your best, you will knock it out of the park. You will know the feeling of true success when you feel the power of your hard work manifest itself in you reaching your goal.
If you know you had nothing more to give – you truly had no more energy to dedicate to your goal, not one more minute was available to work on that project, and you know you couldn’t have started preparing any earlier, and it still doesn’t work out – then know you gave it your best shot, and it just wasn’t meant to be.
Don’t dwell on failures – your competition for your next goal is already hard at work.
“Winning means you’re willing to go longer, work harder, and give more than anyone else.”
~Vince Lombardi
You spend the first part of your life working towards the necessities; you strive to graduate high school, then college, then to get a job, a house, maybe a family. But what happens when you meet prerequisites of life and find that you have time to spare? What do you do? Where do you go?
Some people get caught up and find themselves in a “midlife crisis.” Some people feel that college, family, and the norm is not for them and find themselves doing a whole lot of nothing. So how do you choose your next accomplishment?
Use some forward thinking and picture yourself much later in life. It’s a bit morbid but we soon realize that as we get older our knees hurt more, it takes longer to recover, and that beach body gets harder to obtain.
Will you look back with your aches and wish you would have run more? Will you look back and wish you would have tried sky diving? How long will you say “I always wanted to….”
You have one life to fill with as much awesome-ness as you can. If you want it there’s a way. Don’t be your own obstacle. Make it happen.
GrowingUpGuy 