ENDURANCE CRUSHES CHALLENGES

Research published in the Journal of Sports Sciences has found successful Olympians have a high degree of self-confidence, are able to block out distractions, manage their arousal level, are goal-oriented and demonstrate a healthy form of perfectionism. To put up the sporting shows that we enjoy on TV, these athletes literally put their bodies through hell in order to be in top shape for the competition. Winning an Olympic gold medal is a mean feat achieved only by truly exceptional people. You are already an exceptional person by the virtue of the fact that you are the sperm that won the race to the egg out of millions of sperm cells. Do not take this for granted. Only special people win and before you were born you already proved you were special. So what's happening to you today? Why aren't you winning? 

A guy walks into the restaurant and while waiting for his order he tells a story that inspired this article. He was a chef for 18 years. One day while leaning over a counter he pushed a tray that pushed a sharp pointed knife. The knife landed on his foot and stuck there. It was rush hour he said. In the restaurant industry you don't mess with your rush hour. It is a period you can't say no to any order or run out of anything let alone the chef. According to him, he looked at this and even though it was bleeding he pulled out the knife, taped the wound with gauze underneath, put his plastic shoe back on and went back to work for 6 hours. He showed me the scar. That's an incredible story. While I do not advocate that I want to draw lessons from the mental strength this man exhibited to ignore his bleeding foot and went on to get his job done. That's the mindset of a champion. He won! 

A reporter once asked the legendary boxer Mohammed Ali how many sit ups he did a day to stay in shape. Ali said, “I don’t know because I don’t start counting until it hurts”. Mohammed Ali is considered the greatest boxer of all time because of his boxing skills and accomplishments. Ali was not known to be a hard pincher like Mike Tyson and unlike Tyson who ended most of his fights very early, Ali took most of his fights to the very end. He was 'blessed' with speed, agility, footwork and incredible athleticism. I say 'blessed' because he worked exceptionally hard in training to hone those skills and deployed them effectively in his fights. He was an endurance machine. That's the word I have been looking for: ENDURANCE

Endurance is primarily defined as the ability to withstand adversity or hardship. Has anyone told you that life is hard? Like seriously. Has anyone sat you down and told you that life is very rough and hard? While raising kids we try our best to make life beautiful for them. They call social services when they are whipped and things like that. However, when they grow up and become adults the same system that helped wrap a bubble around them will send police after them and jail them if they commit a crime worthy of jail. For me, it was better to be whipped by my mum as a kid than go to jail as an adult because I lack discipline. I digress. 

Endurance does not come by accident. No one is born with it. It is a skill that is learned. Many of us go to the gym and do some work out but compared to professional athletes (they are the best examples of endurance) all we do in the gym is exercise. These guys train. By training I mean they focus on every part of their body and make sure it is worked out. This way they can perform optimally. These guys put in an incredible amount of work for the few minutes we watch them on TV. For instance, a footballer plays at most 2 games a week. That's about 200 mins. To be able to do this they have to train at least 5 to 6 hours everyday for 5 days. This may or may not include football practice and gym work outs. They put in at least 20 hours of strenuous work so they can perform for a game that lasts less than 2 hours. Do you see why they have endurance? 

People who know me well know how much I like skill mobility. I have been able to find ingenious ways of making things that worked, say in the lab, and apply the same to marketing. An example is going round the city of Edmonton to buy pizza from various places and pulling them apart like I was doing scientific analysis so I can find their weakness and strengths. It has led me to have one of the best pizzas in the city. Now imagine cultivating an athletes mentality and applying same to your life. You will win! 

Athletes do not just train to participate in events. They train to win. They train to be better than their peers who are already excellent at running or jumping or footballing or swimming or boxing and so on. To do this they need to have endurance or stamina. Winners don't stop when they are tired but when the race is done. Winners never quit because they have endurance. They start counting their sit ups when it starts hurting. That's what you need to start doing. Stop whinning. Whinners are never winners! Go get it done and win!