KEEP GOING!
I want to take a minute today to offer you a simple but I hope meaningful word of encouragement. If you've made the commitment to chasing excellence - to pursuing your very best in some important area of life - then you're following the call of your inner champion. That's fun and exhilarating. But choosing to chase excellence can also be difficult. It can be frustrating. Sometimes it can be downright exhausting. That decision to chase excellence invigorates your inner champion, but it irritates your inner loser. That negative voice inside starts working on you. When it gets irritated, it tempts you to take the easy way out, go through the motions, or maybe even bail on your pursuit altogether.
The voice of our inner loser is powerful and convincing. Some days it's really loud and mean, like a bully. ("You're terrible! What an embarrassment!") Other days it's sneakier, trying to con you like a used car salesman. ("Come on, take today off. You deserve a break,” it says. “Besides, no one will even notice.”) It endlessly justifies why today is the perfect day to stay out of the arena and accept being average.
Instead of listening to your inner loser, I want to encourage you today to search for and listen to the voice of your inner champion. That voice isn’t always as resounding or as relentless. In fact, some days it may be nothing more that a subtle whisper...but it is there. It provides a simple but powerful reminder to each of us. Keep going. Don't quit. Take advantage of all today has to offer, because today matters. Trust that this important thing you're chasing is worth the effort, and that your effort does make a difference.
Since I first saw this image years ago, it has illustrated for me that battle that exists between our inner loser and our inner champion. It's often accompanied by the famous Thomas Edison quote, “Many of life’s failures are people who didn’t realize how close they were to success when they gave up.” It serves as a great reminder that - if we keep working - today could be the day we hit it big, the day we find what we’ve been looking for, or the day we finally break through to success.
But it also highlights the danger that comes with listening to our inner loser. That sad soul in the picture has convinced himself that it’s no use and that his dream will never come to fruition - that today is the perfect day to justify walking away. Don’t you feel sorry for him? Don’t you just want to grab him by the shoulders and shake some sense into him? “It’ll all be worth it.You're getting close...just keep going!” What a shame he didn’t realize how close he was to success when he gave up.
I can’t promise you that today you’re on the verge of hitting it big, of finding what you’ve been looking for, or of breaking through to success. But I can promise you that today matters, that it is worth the effort, and that it does make a difference. So keep going! Don't give up. Tune out the lies of your inner loser, and listen instead to the voice of your inner champion. Someday soon - who knows, maybe today! - you’ll be glad you did.