The confidence we find in doing. It is real. Strength comes from everything we suck it up and do.
I have a thing where the winner of challenges at the gym gets extra work to do. People new to the program scratch their head about this. The reason I give the winner extra to do is so they get the extra reps so they can stay on top. Winning does not come with less, winning brings the challengers who are hungry and want your spot. When you are the champ, you don’t get to work less and live it up. You get the attention, good and bad. You get to work even harder because challengers are hungry and they want what you have.
On the way up you may be a roadblock. When you are the champ, you are a target.
Think about when you have failed. Every single corner you cut and session you slacked on comes into your head. You have to work thru everything you did and didn’t do until you find the peace you need to get back to work, or not. I have woken in the middle of the night 20 years after a fight I know I didn’t give my all. I am so mad at myself for giving up an easy win to judges who screwed me. I should have gone harder and finished. It’s been 20 years of this over and over. Regret, Musashi said we have to live life in a way that we won’t regret. So true…
Confidence will not come from hollow words you recite or others say. You have to do the work and connect the meaning of the words to your efforts and achievements. Help those around you connect their belief systems with the reality of what they do and do it for yourself. When someone is not recognizing the level of their accomplishments, show them. When you are feeling down, recognize your progress, or kick your ass for not working hard enough to have made some.
Do the work, stop when your body is done, not when you want to be done. You want to know your truth, it is in how far you push. If you quit when you want, you are not as strong as you could be. If you go til your body quits, you know where you stand and how strong you actually are. Failure is a beautiful truth that we need to embrace if we ever want to know how tough, how strong, how durable… we actually are.
No more excuses. Stop saying “just”, those “just”s add up. It’s just 1 rep, 1 donut, 1 cigarette, 1 more drink, 1 more hit of the snooze button… Be relentless and find the way to get it done. If you focus long enough and work hard enough, the answers will all make themselves known.
Brian Wright