Monday 1 February 2016

A Rule Of Thumb That Changed My Life

By Evan Sanders


When I was in my final season of baseball in high school, I took a few trips down to University Of Southern California to learn from a very famous pitching coach named Tom House.

Tom House's claim to fame wasn't that he was a great pitcher, but that he was a brilliant pitching coach. In fact, he was so good that he coached the most famous pitcher of all time, Nolan Ryan.

After a dead silent bullpen session that lasted about 60-80 pitches, Tom looked over at me and said words that I would never forget...and will probably never forget for the rest of my life.

He said to me, "Evan. 10% of the time you are going to be amazing, 10% of the time you are going to suck worse than imaginable, and 80% of the time you are going to be just average.

Champions are made in that 80%."

80% of the days you have you are going to feel average. That's right. Average. Nothing great about the day. Nothing crappy about the day. Just "meh."

Now that may seem like a nasty realization about life, but there's a secret to all of this.

The secret is this...you get to choose how your day is going to go when you make the decision to rise to the challenge or to fall to pieces. That is completely up to you.

You get the choice of either rising to the challenge or sinking back down into the depths. You get to make the decision to do the hard work and grind through it all or give up completely. But that decision is completely up to you and on you to make.

Even though those decisions don't have an audience, they are the foundations to your integrity as a human being. They may seem like small choices, but eventually they add up and make a huge impact on your life.

Most of the time you will spend hours and hours working your butt off and no one will ever see you put the time and effort in.

But that's not the point. The point is this...

You know...

If you understand that everything in your life truly comes down to who you are on the inside and what you are willing to give to see your dreams through, you can accomplish anything. You can become something great and do great things if you are willing to make the sacrifices.

To make it to the end of your life knowing that you gave it your all would lead to a lot of big smiles in your final moments. You knew that you really did it and gave your heart the best chance it had to see it's wishes through.

That's really the only way to do it. Go big or go home.

So decide that you are going to make the most of those 80% days and become a champion. Have the best year of your life.




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