It’s time for resolutions! New year, new me! Instead, why not try to do everything we can each day? The consistency of doing everything we can each and every day pays more dividends than making trendy resolutions we can’t and won’t keep. Don’t believe me? Ask a gym owner. We can only do what we can during the present moment. Which actually becomes a lot. It may not seem like it, but work on a blog a little bit each day, or work out once per day, or read a chapter in a book once per day then over time …
Today’s word of the day is autodidactic, brought to you by the internet. The internet is perfect for those who don’t know something, which is to say all of us. Today, there is no excuse to say we “don’t know” and let that be the end of it. The smartphone is ubiquitous. Literally ubiquitous. We can go to a third world country and see people living in mud huts, yet have their smartphone and iPad. If we don’t know something, it is as simple as pulling up our favorite search engine or social video site. It’s not difficult. Anyone can …
We have two outlooks of life: positive and negative. Or if you’d rather, the glass’s half-empty or half-full. We can be one of the other. We can’t possess them simultaneously. The outlook we have in life is infectious, not only for ourselves but to others. More than likely, you are who we thought you were. Humans are social creatures. The worst thing we can do is isolate ourselves from others. We tend to want to associate and spend time with like minded people: The Law of Attraction. We are the average of the five people with whom you spend most …
It’s time for the 2016 Running Year in Review, already. Man, this year flew by. It seems like just yesterday that we rung in the New Year. I started the running year with some ultras, a marathon, I thought about triathlons (because why not?), and then back to running. Everyone has a plan until they get punched in the face. I made some modifications. I had some long, unplanned breaks. But at the end, I learned a lot. Altra Ambassador Early in December I learned I became an Altra Ambassador. I honestly didn’t think I’d get it. I …
The sun is still waking up, but I’m up. I start to write my second blog post of the day before we’re able to play a game of catch outside. Waking up early has a habit of extremely productivity, for those who practice it. They say that morning birds are the productive people of society. They’re not wrong. Waking up early means starting our days when it’s calm, void of distractions, and as a way to jump starts our productivity. Above all, it adds time to our days. Waking up early – hours before sunrise – means we have extra …
We’ll have success once we want success as much as our next breath.
I’m not really one for sharing YouTube videos, mainly because most people are horrible [citation needed] at choosing which videos to shares. This video is not one.
The first time I watched that video, which I believe Entrepreneur.com featured in an article, I reflected on “as much as your next breath”. Few phrases resonate as much.
We’ve all had the experience that we must do one thing right now! that is more important than anything else. Our next breath when we’re underwater, finding a bathroom when we gotta go, or a gulp of water when we took a bite to eat too hot (okay, that’s flippant, but the point remains).
The same comes with success. Success – however you want to define it – does not come easy. To become really, really successful becomes even more difficult. We can’t show up at the door of success, knock on it, and expect to be let in — we have to break it open!
We have to plan, we have to execute, we have to spend more time away from family and friends to achieve what we want. It gets lonely. It becomes frustrating. It becomes isolating. It becomes a mental grind of everyday consistency when not everything goes right. To want success we have to really want success. We can’t sort of want success; we really have to want it. It has to permeate your soul.
We all know people who kind of want success. They wonder why they aren’t successful. Success does not come on a silver platter. Success, instead, comes on the top of climbing mountains, crossing rivers, and diving down trenches. We just can’t want success, we have to eat, breath, and sleep success.
Watch profiles about billionaires starting their companies, about how they made their fortunes. Their success was their next breath. When asked, how many say that if they had to do it over again they wouldn’t? That should tell you something about the level of dedication it takes to reach the top. To want success, we have to want it more than the next breath.
How do some people get so much done? They must have extra time in their lives! No, actually, no one days. Everyone has the same exact numbers of hours each day. Although, some people have much better time management execution than others. Knowing how to use our time wisely takes skill, practice, and execution. I have a friend, Chad, who says he never has “time to kill” because he always finds a way to productively use his time. If we think about that, that makes sense. A hour “to kill” per day becomes seven hours per week. A few minutes …
When we can’t do something, we start to appreciate it more. That quintessentially describes my last month of running. After the Philadelphia Marathon – the Sunday before Thanksgiving – I took a week off for recovery. Then, I got right back at it. I got new shoes. I sustained, what’s believed to be, Achilles tendinitis. I can nearly guarantee that the injury stemmed from tying my new shoes too tightly (it’s one of those injuries that comes from not knowing what the pain is, trying to run through it until it’s too late and becomes an actual problem; and that …
Everyday needs to be something. We all have days better and worse than others. Some days everything is “clicking” the way we want. Some days are bogged down with activities, tasks, chores, and work that we would rather not do. But, we have only one life (YOLO, y’all). We have 24 hours each day. Today, I will be at my part-time “day job” for most of it. Some people would chalk today up as a “wasted” day. Especially with the freezing rain we had overnight. But isn’t that mindset self-defeating? Doesn’t that rationalize many days as “lost days” in which …
