Try these: competition, helping others, preparation
If someone asks you to go one mile with them, go two instead. In fact, don’t wait for them to ask. As a servant leader, be willing to go the extra mile for others because of who you are, not who the other person is. But before you can go the extra mile, know that you’ve got to have humility. It is impossible to go the extra mile without being humble.
That’s because humility is giving the best of me for the best of you, even if it costs me.
A servant leader will go the extra mile for others, but he or she is only able to do this with humility. A humble heart is a prerequisite for becoming an extra miler.
Rock solid confidence depends on your mindset. Mindset is how you see the things around you. When you make the choice to see what’s happening around you through the right lens, you will develop confidence that can’t be shaken by the momentary circumstances you encounter. To build rock solid confidence, it helps to know what confidence is and what it isn’t.
Building rock solid confidence means knowing what confidence is, what it isn’t, and how to orient your mindset for maximum confidence, no matter what circumstances come up.
“Humble warrior” might seem like an oxymoron at first glance, but the definitions of both words mesh really well. Humility is giving the best of me for the best of you, even if it costs me. And a warrior is someone who deploys their talents and energy for the good of others, for a cause greater than self. Warriors act not for their personal good, but for the greater good.
Humility gives you the strength to work for others even when it costs you, just as a warrior does.
A “try” is a tool used in carpentry to ensure the wood is level. The old saying that someone or something is “tried and true” comes from the process of using that tool to level the wood to create a finished piece. You can’t level a piece of wood without a painful shearing process, and you can’t have tried and true character without going through the process of overcoming adversity.
See, adversity reveals the truth about your character, just as a try reveals the levelness of the wood. Adversity will reveal a lot of different things, but three of the most closely related to adversity are humility, integrity, and toughness.
The thing that you do most consistently is the thing you’ll be most successful at. You get great at what you get reps at, and whatever you get the most reps at, whatever you are most consistent at, is what your normal will be. When you create a new normal to be consistently better today than yesterday, there’s no limit to how successful you can be.
Sometimes it’s easier to accept a lie or half-truth than to look for the whole truth, but only by making total truth the new normal can you truly succeed.
The more consistently you get reps at creating a new normal, the more success you will find both on and off the field.
You can come up with all kinds of reasons to procrastinate and to put today’s work off until tomorrow. But today’s finish line is tomorrow’s starting line. Where you stopped yesterday is where you start today. You can come up with all kinds of reasons for why you can put off today’s work until tomorrow, but that negative progress is cumulative, just as positive forward movement is cumulative.
If you put off today’s work for tomorrow, you will find it still waiting for you tomorrow. Maybe worry is holding you back from doing today’s work, such as worry about performing well or worry about missing out on something more fun. Worry won’t get you anywhere, though.
The only way to make progress, the only way to consistently keep moving forward towards your goals and dreams, is to do today’s work today.
“Underdog” is a label that others will put on you based on a prediction of the future calculated by looking at what happened in the past. But the future is not guaranteed and the past is over and done with. It doesn’t matter if someone calls you an underdog; those predictions are their business. Your business is choosing to press on regardless.
Underdog is just a label that others use in their attempts to predict the future. What they say is their business. Your business is choosing to press on by no longer looking at the past and instead moving one step closer to where you want to be.
We are quick to say that family matters, but sometimes there is a disconnect between our words and our actions. If you really stop and ask yourself if your family matters, what do your actions say in response?
Put another way, are you bought in on your family? Again, you may be tempted to just say yes, but what do your actions say? When you pay a price for your family, that is when you buy in.
Family isn’t just your blood relatives. Family is your team, your friends, and your classmates. Family is your community. Here are a few examples of how your actions might show that your family matters to you.
Whether you win or lose is less important than what you do in the aftermath. How well your team plays the game determines whether you win or lose, but how well you accept and respond to a win or loss determines whether you will be successful in future games and in life. Winning well makes you better at losing, and losing well makes you better at winning.
How you deal with a win or a loss directly reflects your growth as a leader and a teammate. Everyone will lose at some point. The questions to ask are: What will you do when you win? What will you do when you lose?
The famous fable of the tortoise and the hare teaches us that consistent work ethic will always beat inconsistent talent. If all you have is great talent with no consistency, then like the hare in the story, you’ll end up losing to a tortoise when you should have won no question. Slow and steady progress towards a goal will win over fast but faulty progress.
The hare lost to the tortoise because consistent hard work will always beat inconsistent talent. Follow the ABCs of consistent work ethic and you’ll see how slow and steady wins the race.