10.1 Roger Maris: Be Prepared

“You hit home runs not by chance but by preparation.” - Roger Maris

When do you feel most prepared?

After a rough game, a coach told me, “I knew we were going to play badly.”

After I asked him how he knew, he told me, “Because of how we practiced this week. It’s hard to outplay how you practice.”

That is so true. It blows my mind how many people practice slow but expect to play fast—it just doesn’t work that way.

You might get lucky every now and then and outplay how you practice, but that doesn’t happen often. Roger Maris was an American professional baseball player, best known for breaking Babe Ruth’s single-season home run record.

He once said, “You hit home runs not by chance but by preparation.” 

Sustained success doesn’t come from luck—it comes from what you do every day and how hard you work. You might get lucky every now and then, but you don’t set and break records because of luck—you do it because of how prepared you are.

Question of the Day: How can you be as prepared as you need to be to do what you want with confidence?