Hard…

The great life, I believe, is realized when one embraces the fact that life is designed to be hard. Building on this fact, it only makes sense you will experience great joy when learning to do hard things. This usually starts by doing hard things shitty. As your reps remove doubt, you begin to do your hard things a bit better. Eventually, if you keep working and learning with each fail, you will do hard things well.

Joy. Joy. Joy.

You must remember through this process to become a humble warrior who has made it their sacred habit to be hard on self, not down on self. As you learn to do hard things well, you must also embrace this one – hard on self, not high on self. Fact.

Yesterday, during eight different team practices, this was the melody line. Too many athletes are hard on self and down on self. A few are high, only a few. I much prefer to work with ones a bit too high. Your job, athlete, is to master your craft. Push yourself to the edge of your challenge zone habitually. Embrace the fail, learn, level up model. You will gain competence and confidence will come along for the ride (most of the time). When you get too big for your britches, we’ll ground you with hard truth. You will never arrive and find joy in the journey. You will experience deep joy as hard things become flow evoking not fear filling. This weekend OSU grapplers face a stiff test – The number one PSU Nittany Lions. They are a wrecking machine. Intimidating on paper and on the mat. Our collective mindsets will be under a severe test. I believe a few BUCKS are gonna come up big. The key? Do they believe more than me.

Leaders are believers. Leaders are connectors. Leaders initiate. Let’s be hunters. Expect hard. Damn.

Live hard. Love harder…