By Mark Schwab, Opportunities to Succeed
It must come from you
It’s on you/Stack ‘em up
The price of greatness is Responsibility.
If you avoid it, you’ll strengthen it. If you confront it, you’ll master it.
How much of competing is mental? How much time and effort do you focus on your mental and emotional climate? Most performance problems are mind and body, not in tune. You train your muscles and body. You train technique, skills, and yes, your mental climate benefits, but there’s much more potential if you’ll focus within. There’s no way to reach potential without the support of your mental/emotional climate and no way to reach greatness without body, mind, emotions in harmony, and functioning on a very high level. Most people overlook this, and it’s a colossal mistake. Most pay no attention to their mental/emotional climate unless there are problems. The fact is, most are leaving feet and pounds of available potential untouched. If reaching potential and excellence are important to you, then read on. I’ve seen so many athletes gamble and lose because they didn’t pay attention to the wobbly wheel under their own hat. Your opportunities are limited in life/athletics. The crumbs it calls for upfront is nothing compared to the regret at the completion of your career.
Like anything worthwhile, maturing your mind and emotions must be worked at. This is about going beyond, going inward, investigating, and identifying while creating awareness. You must slow the wheels within like never before. The calmer, cooler, and composed you are, the slower the internal wheels. Unhurried wheels allow you to go deeper; the deeper, the more potential. The deepest well has yet to be dug.
If you make up your mind, trust, and commit, you will experience the benefits. This doesn’t necessarily guarantee you success, but you will progress. If you straddle the fence, you get little to nothing. You’re either in or out. There’s nothing else – There’s no genie lamp. There are no secrets, shortcuts, or apps. Strengthening your mental and emotional climate requires time, endurance, responsibility, consistency, and your full attention, and why shouldn’t it. You have to pay the tole upfront. This is a law of life. I promise, if you’re sincere, there will be the necessary hope to propel you forward and open doors you’ve never dreamed.
There’s a major misunderstanding when it comes to progress, confidence, growth, change, etc. The greatest plans in life are grounded in simplicity, but we as a person, tend to view simple concepts from a surface and shallow level, instead of enthusiasm, open-mind, and ongoing commitment. We tend to rationalize and analyze things to death, instead of welcoming and accepting with eagerness, the opportunity to flourish.
Until we incorporate daily, whatever it is we want to manifest, we’ll make little to no change or progress. Transformation takes conscious/intentional repeated behavior until its habit and internalized.
The fact is, most of us don’t stay with anything long enough to experience significant change and development. Much like a new year resolution, we read a book, attend a seminar or begin a diet or workout plan, only to take-off in a dead sprint that quickly subsides going back to what’s familiar, even when it’s damaging.
Anything rewarding demands resolution. Whatever you want to come up first in thought, behavior, and instinct, like reactions when competing, takes awareness and consistency. The current US/sub mind will do everything it can to prevent change, even though it’s beneficial. We become comfortable with defeating thoughts, behaviors, and emotions. Our Sub-mind will come up with excuses, procrastinate, and remain defiant. Why? The current you/sub-mind is comfortable, and our survival instincts to protect our existing conditions, will heavily resist any shift or revision. This is why change is so difficult but not impossible. Knowing what’s happening within and the challenges you’ll encounter helps tremendously. You’ll notice when resistance sets in. They’re just old/sub-mind programs that can be altered by CONSCIOUS/deliberate behavior. The reason positive change doesn’t take is because we’re operating on superficial and an external level.
You have to give conscious attention, repetition, over and over to line-up with your sub-minds potential. You must purposely stimulate, encourage, and reinforce your mind to CONSTANT RENEWAL of whatever thoughts, words, beliefs, behaviors you want internalized. You must impress on sub-mind with consistency, enthusiasm, and sincere belief if you want the real-life experience. Remember, The law of the sub-mind accepts what’s impressed upon it and what you consciously believe. It does not reason things out like your conscious mind. Once your sub-mind accepts an idea, it begins to execute it for good or bad alike. So, the importance is in selecting, thoughts, ideas, behaviors that inspire, are healthy, and positive. Your sub-mind is the seat of habit. Your thoughts, habits, and behaviors become your experience.
Progression and greatness is much like chopping through a large log with a small ax. Day in and day out, little by little, the transformation may seem nil or even non-existent, but over time, the little by little adds up and becomes noticeable. You have to endure the early resistance of going back to what’s been your normal/sub-conscious. Your progress does not have a holding-plan for you, and you don’t break even. If you take action one day but nothing the next, your back to zero. You have to string many days together. Forget about the destination; get lost and focus on the doing, the process. If you endure, you will get what you’re looking for. Anything that grows fast, withers as fast and that which grows slow, endures. There’s no fast-tracking. The days will pass regardless, and if you seize today, tomorrow, the next day, you’ll progress. In my experience, you can actually FEEL gains rather quickly. The way you feel trumps your thoughts. Yes, they’re connected, but thoughts aren’t necessarily true and often misleading, but feelings are much more primal, accurate, and possibility ridden.
The potential, experience, and knowledge is only potential and remains dormant until put it into motion/emotion. This is insurance, precaution, and forethought. This is giving yourself every opportunity to succeed. Many say they will do anything, leave no stone unturned, but really they only do what they are comfortable with and likely what they have always done, yet expecting different results. If you’re going to be on earth anyway, just do it today, and when tomorrow arrives, do it again. There are no magical seeds. Stack ’em up.
In my experience, unless you embark on something that drives, motivates and excites you, you’ll NEVER sustain. Most won’t take action unless inspired or in enough pain; ENOUGH! Since we live mostly between these two extremes, we’re half-hearted about most endeavors. Put down the electronics and figure out what really stirs at our core. Sadly, most people give way more time taking selfies than figuring out what really moves them and how to achieve it.
There are many levels of commitment in sports and life. Many are not driven enough to “pick up the tab” day after day. The beauty of investing within is the quality of your entire life will benefit. This goes way beyond the score of a match. This could be one of the most powerful and beneficial challenges you ever embark on.
Far too many settle on so-so, caution, and never reaching their promise. A very slapdash, timid, rattled, and passive quality patch-job for their life. They allow rescue, never risking or progressing into uncertainty. They avoid the search, demands, or defining moments that would allow for the promise awaiting for those who go to such lengths.
In the end, the experience is as meaningful as the achievement itself. Make up your mind. Make a decision, absolute, proactive, then you’re the one who determines what happens next. Truthfully, until you submerge completely, you’ll always have hesitancy. Allow yourself to experience abundance, wage war on mediocrity, and you’ll be inspired, free, and thankful you did.
To go beyond who you are, you have to go beyond who you think you are. Until you go beyond what’ s familiar and conventional, you’re stranded and uncertain. It’s really deciding if your life is meaningful enough. We actually choose to be a prisoner/keeping ourselves immobile and inactive. If you look closely, it’s not the chains holding you; it’s you holding the chains. You’re the inmate and jailer at the same time. To go within is to go beyond; this is the beginning of waking up, reaching potential, and inspired living.
Mark Schwab – mark@opportunitiestosucceed.com
More Motivation:
- Above Your Shoulders – Motivation By Mark Schwab (10/25/2011)