Thought For The Week: 

My high school football coach used to run us like crazy after a bad game. 

While I’m sure these tactics wouldn’t be accepted today, the lessons I learned in these moments still help me when things are hard. 

The most practical skill in life is learning to do things when you don’t feel like doing them. Anyone can do it when it’s easy, but most people drop out the minute easy stops.

Muhammad Ali was asked how many sit-ups would do to prepare for a fight. His reply: “I don't count my sit-ups. I only start counting when it starts hurting. When I feel pain, that's when I start counting, because that's when it really counts.” 

True to Ali’s mindset, our coach would only start counting the sprints when people started falling over. Inevitably someone on the team would say they wanted to quit. The coach would shout back a bunch of things that can’t be repeated, but he’d finish with “If you really want to quit, you can quit tomorrow, but you can’t quit today.”

No one ever quit the next day. 

The person who is consistent outperforms the person who is intermittent every time. While inconsistent effort works for some things, for the things that really matter you need to be consistent. If you want to be consistent, you need strategies to keep you going when things are hard. 

The key to doing something you know you should do when you don’t feel like doing it is telling yourself that you can quit tomorrow but not today.