Choices - Why The Best Are The Best

Where you are and where you are going are based mostly off of the choices that you make.

The rest is based off how you react to those choices. Every choice that you make matters: Do I get to the gym early, or do I rest? Do I put up extra shots, or do I hang out with my teammates? Do I read this extra chapter today? Do I stay late in the office tonight? Do I spend extra time with my family this weekend?

Everyday we are faced with hundreds of choices that we can make. Each choice has its consequence. Be intentional in how you make the choices that you make.

The 3 Things You Need To Make It

If you want to make it - become the best you can be, get a scholarship, play professionally, become a doctor, own your own business, become a millionaire - you must do these three things:

1 - Work Hard
2 - Work Smart
3 - Work consistently

Some of us do one of these things, and fewer do two of these things, but very few do all three of these things.  

Working hard means taking yourself out of your comfort zone.  If you want to be your best, you have to learn how to be comfortable being uncomfortable.  Working hard is a choice.  Make the choice to go to the gym.  When you get their, you have the choice to either work hard or to not work hard.  It's easy to make excuses to not go to the gym, or to study, but if you want to be great, you have to make a conscious decision that you are going to work, that you are going to work hard, that you are going to work smart, and they you are going to do it consistently.

Create a Habit of Trying

The habit of TRYING is the first step to success.  Try.  You will be amazed at what you can accomplish if you just try.

Use ‘try’ as a mini-challenge that keeps you growing and progressing into becoming the person that you want to become.  Accomplishing anything requires a start, and starting requires a willingness to try.  Try to do better, try to do the right thing, try to give your best as consistently as possible, and try to get out of your comfort zone.

To do so, your try must be great. 

-        -  Your try must be greater than your fear.

-        -  Your try must be greater than your doubt.

-         -  Your try must be greater than any embarrassment that you may suffer from failing or from not accomplishing what you set out to do.

Success does not come from being a spectator.  Success comes from jumping in and being participant.

Create a habit of trying.

It’s not about where you’ve been and what you’ve done, but about where you’re capable of going and who you are capable of becoming.

The habit of TRYING is the first step to success.  Try.  You will be amazed at what you can accomplish if you just try.

- For more on this topic, I highly suggest you look into the book Why The Best Are the Best by Kevin Eastman.  It's a great book about the keywords that all successful people live out every day.

Take Action and Don't Quit

Success is smart – it will test you at many turns.  Its biggest test is failure.  Success wants to know if you will quit.  Remember that failure is a part of all successful team and individual journeys.  

Don’t fear failure because it happens to the best of the best.  If you fear the consequence of failure, put equal fear to the consequence of never trying.  What would happen if you tried and it actually worked out?  At some point, it will!  Imagine if you knew you would succeed but you didn’t try.  How would you feel then?

Try, and don’t quit.  Act, and don’t quit.

Don’t define success by wins and losses.  Define success by starting, trying, acting and giving your best effort.  If you do those and ‘win,’ then great.  If you do those and ‘lose,’ its still great as long as you learned from your mistakes, got better, and didn’t quit.  Eventually you will win, and with the right attitude, you will probably win sooner than later. 

We usually know what we are supposed to do, but we fail to do what we know.  When we don’t act, the act doesn’t disappear – it stays and haunts us – even more than it would if we had tried and failed.  Lack of action sticks with us and it stacks with each lack of action.

Take action.  Start.  Try.  Fail.  Don’t quit.  You can’t lose as long as you are learning.  Make action a core ingredient of who you are.

- For more on this topic, I highly suggest you look into the book Why The Best Are the Best by Kevin Eastman.  It's a great book about the keywords that all successful people live out every day.