Workouts at 11:45PM on Saturday nights. 6AM lifts before summer school. Significant financial risks and stress most people would call insane. Reading 20 pages each night instead of spending time on social media. Red eye flights literally all the way across the country taking time away from family. Eating greens instead of grease. Spending 6 weeks at home in 4 months.
These are all things I’ve had people in my circle do or I’ve done myself in the past few weeks. It’s the unseen work. The grind doesn’t make for great tv and social media content because it’s definitely not sexy. It’s working on 1 dribble pull-ups instead of triple combo move step backs. It’s spending 1 hour meticulously revising a paragraph instead of posting the cover of your book on Instagram. You might see glimpses of it, but most people on the outside don’t realize that this is a CONSISTENT thing. The little you see on social media? Yeah, that happens daily. It’s not a once in a while thing. Anyone can work hard once in a while. It’s ridiculously hard to do it day after day after day.
So how do you do it? It’s hard. Really hard. And, some days I fail miserably. But we can do two things each day. We can get grounded in a vision and choose faith over fear.
We talk a lot about having a vision when you first decide a new path you want to take, but it doesn’t matter much unless you are continually coming back to that vision. Schedule 3 minutes of it during your day, create a lock screen on your phone that reminds you of it or do a vision board. It’s the consistent reminders, like mantras, and intentional visualization that drives you forward and keeps you grounded.
Once you have that clear, vivid vision you can come back to, you have a choice to make. Each day when you wake up you can either choose fear or you can choose faith. You can chose scarcity or abundance. Faith that you have the mindfulness to find the opportunity amidst what some would call insurmountable challenges. Faith that you’re living in an ocean of opportunity. Faith that your hard work might not pay off for what you’re working towards, but that somewhere down the line it will pay off for something. Faith that the greatest accomplishments and experiences in our life are more amazing than we could ever imagine. This vision drives your faith. Your faith supports your vision.
A new job, making varsity or getting a college scholarship — no matter what it is — you have to choose faith. You have to choose the work. And, it’s not easy. It’s red eye flights, midnight workouts and a daily meditation practice. You have to trade what you want at the moment for what you want the most.
This post was inspired by Jon Gordon’s book, The Shark and The Goldfish.