You can push yourself to a place that is beyond the current capability or temporal mindset of the people you work with, and that’s okay. Just know that your supposed superiority is a figment of your own ego. So don’t lord it over them, because it won’t help you advance as a team or as an individual in your field. Instead of getting angry that your colleagues can’t keep up, help pick your colleagues up and bring them with you!
Most wars are won or lost in our own heads, and when we’re in a foxhole we usually aren’t alone, and we need to be confident in the quality of the heart, mind, and dialogue of the person hunkered down with us. Because at some point we will need some empowering words to keep us focused and deadly.
I understand the temptation to sell short, but I also know that impulse is driven by your mind’s desire for comfort, and it’s not telling you the truth. It’s your identity trying to find sanctuary, not help you grow. It’s looking for status quo, not reaching for greatness.
To develop an armored mind – a mindset so calloused and hard that it becomes bulletproof – you need to go to the source of all your fears and insecurities. Most of us sweep our failures and evil secrets under the rug, but when we run into problems, that rug gets lifted up, and our darkness re-emerges, floods our soul, and influences the decisions which determine our character.
You must recognize what you are about to do, highlight what you do not like about it, and spend time visualizing each and every obstacle you can. I.
In life, there is no gift as overlooked or inevitable as failure. I’ve had quite a few and have learned to relish them, because if you do the forensics you’ll find clues about where to make adjustments and how to eventually accomplish your task.
I’m haunted by my future goals, not my past failures. I’m haunted by what I may still become. I’m haunted by my own continued thirst for evolution.
We habitually settle for less than our best; at work, in school, in our relationships, and on the playing field or race course.
I was the sum total of the obstacles I’d overcome.
The reason it’s important to push hardest when you want to quit the most is because it helps you callous your mind. It’s the same reason why you have to do your best work when you are the least motivated.
It’s funny, humans tend to hatch our most challenging goals and dreams, the ones that demand our greatest effort yet promise absolutely nothing, when we are tucked into our comfort zones.
You can’t let a simple failure derail your mission, or let it worm so far up your ass it takes over your brain and sabotages your relationships with people who are close to you. Everyone fails sometimes and life isn’t supposed to be fair, much less bend to your every whim.
From the time you take your first breath, you become eligible to die. You also become eligible to find your greatness and become the One Warrior. But it is up to you to equip yourself for the battle ahead. Only you can master your mind, which is what it takes to live a bold life filled with accomplishments most people consider beyond their capability.
It’s about what we do with opportunities revoked or presented to us that determine how a story ends.
There is so much pain and suffering involved in physical challenges that it’s the best training to take command of your inner dialogue, and the newfound mental strength and confidence you gain by continuing to push yourself physically will carry over to other aspects in your life. You will realize that if you were underperforming in your physical challenges, there is a good chance you are underperforming at school and work too.
That’s when I first realized that not all physical and mental limitations are real, and that I had a habit of giving up way too soon.
To make fun of or try to intimidate someone they didn’t even know based on race alone was a clear indication that something was very wrong with them, not me.
Life experience, especially negative experiences, help callous the mind. But it’s up to you where that callous lines up. If you choose to see yourself as a victim of circumstance into adulthood, that callous will become resentment that protects you from the unfamiliar. It will make you too cautious and untrusting, and possibly too angry at the world. It will make you fearful of change and hard to reach, but not hard of mind.
Believe it or not, most people prefer delusion. They blame others or bad luck or chaotic circumstance.
It is a lifelong quest for more knowledge, more courage, more humility, and more belief. Because when you summon the strength and discipline to live like that, the only thing limiting your horizons is you.