We will see it when we believe it.
For four years, a Chinese bamboo tree is planted and watered without an inch of growth above ground.
It builds a deep root system beneath the surface, for hundreds of days, as it’s tended to and nurtured. The bamboo’s stems, which create a foundation of stability, venture far into the earth. In the fifth year, due to seemingly hidden maturation, the Chinese bamboo tree bursts to and through the surface. Extending rapidly above soil, it shoots up to 90 feet in six weeks! Its explosive growth is a byproduct of years of development, dormancy, and deep drive.
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People are rewarded in public for thousands of hours growing in private.
Patience: the capacity to endure delay, to experience difficulty, and to embrace suffering with unwavering resolve.
In the Winter of 2007, a fifteen year old boy, who played almost every sport, from baseball to karate, found himself discouraged one night. Earlier that day, a coach told him, “You are quick and athletic, but you are too small to compete at the next level.” The boy locked himself in his bedroom. He looked himself in the mirror. Tears welled up in his eyes. “Maybe he’s right,” the boy whispered to himself…
Then he looked at posters on the walls in his room, from a captivating mountain range to powerful professional athletes. One image was of LaDainian Tomlinson (“LT”), an undersized running back who played at a less-known college, Texas Christian University. At only 5’10”, Tomlinson was well on his way to becoming a Top-10 running back of all time in the National Football League. Inspired, the boy unlocked his bedroom door and went to the gym. While there, he again looked himself in the mirror. This time, he smiled wide, just like LT always did. “Maybe he’s wrong,” the boy whispered to himself…“If it is to be, it’s up to me.”
The next day, he went to the gym again. He went the next day, too. He went to some gym somewhere every day for the next three years. In the Fall of 2010, he verbally committed to play varsity lacrosse at Yale University. That boy was me.
Everything can be taken from a man but one thing: the last of the human freedoms, to choose one’s attitude in any given set of circumstances, to choose one’s own way.
– Viktor Frankl, Man's Search for Meaning
We get to choose our own way — to be discouraged by criticism or encouraged by it.
What matters more to us, someone else’s opinion or our own choice to become one-in-a-million?
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A repeated thought becomes a belief. A repeated belief becomes a core belief. A repeated, core belief becomes a behavior. Therefore, our behaviors are created by what we think about most of the time.
Rather than allow judgments from others to dampen our dreams, we ought to utilize empowering self-thought and uplifting self-talk to fuel our fire. Words, especially ones that fascinate instead of frustrate us, catalyze our commitment to long-term goals.
Many people do not accomplish their long-term goals because they do not achieve milestones along the way. Many people do not achieve milestones because they are not eager to stack smaller tasks. Many people do not stack smaller tasks because they are not willing to overcome the initial friction of getting started.
It’s the start that stops most people.
Friction: the force that resists relative motion; it slows down, and sometimes stops, an object or a person due to its opposing nature.
Greater than friction, momentum is the most powerful force in the universe. It begins with action in one moment that overcomes friction. In many ways, friction asks, “How badly do you want this?” For example, imagine it is raining one morning as we wake up and decide to go workout. Deciding is what occurs right before commitment. We must then commit to walk through seconds of rain on our way to and from our cars. Once we embrace getting a little wet, we also resolve to getting a little better.
The heaviest weight at the gym is the front door.
– Ed Latimore, professional heavyweight boxer and keynote speaker
Are we willing eager to master the art of showing up, day after day, consistently? If the answer is “yes,” we have a chance at discovering our best. If the answer is “no,” our best is something we may never know.
There are so many stories of undersized athletes who fulfilled their potential, from Lionel Messi to Rocky Marciano. Each and every one of those athletes possessed one unwavering trait that made them great: consistent, unwavering belief. If we look for role models of inspiration, we will find them.
We see what we seek (Matthew 7:7).
The most powerful nation in the world is our imagination. It’s nearly impossible to attain something we do not first mentally conceive. To visualize our success is a prerequisite to attainment. Ignore critics who exclaim, “I’ll believe it when I see it;” pursue dreams by faith instead of sight by embodying the notion: “I’ll see it when I believe it.”
Mastery does not happen overnight. Growth, like trust, takes years of overcoming moments of friction to reveal itself.
No patience, no greatness.
Consistency is the key to the treasure we crave.
Build momentum and believe forever!
— MG
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“When nothing seems to help, I go and look at a stonecutter hammering away at his rock perhaps a hundred times without as much as a crack showing in it. Yet at the hundred and first blow it will split in two, and I know it was not that blow that did it, but all that had gone before.” - Jacob Riis, journalist most known for his advocacy for change
“Whoever has will be given more, and they will have an abundance. Whoever does not have, even what they have will be taken from them.” - Matthew 13:12, also known as The Matthew Principle, which accurately describes the exponential nature of success or failure, based on belief or lack thereof
“I had a best friend who believed in me and I did not have the heart to let him down.” - Abe Lincoln on abolishing slavery and uniting the United States of America at the end of the Civil War