Motivational Video – For the Love of the Game

What is it that we admire about the greats?

They set the bar for what is possible.   They push themselves through a barrier of pain that most people can’t even conceive of.  So what is it then that would drive someone to get up at 5, 4, or 3 o’clock in the morning in the freezing cold to work at a goal.  To miss out on holidays, and vacations, and living in a constant state of exertion.  Someone like an Olympic athlete who begins training in their sport at a young age and train 365 days a year missing out on having a social life, dating, going to the prom. Or someone like Bill Gates who worked 7 days a week for 10 years without ever taking a day off, many days going days without eating, showering, or even sleeping.  Or someone like Sean Combs who worked 20 hours a day for 10 years straight.    It has to be something more than just money, fame, recognition.   What it is is the love of the game.  One time Michael Jordan was asked “what is love?” To which, he replied, “love is playing every game as if it is your last”.   He also said,  ” I can accept failure, but I can’t accept not trying”.

It’s said that during the Kentucky Derby, a horse will run out of oxygen within the first half of the race.  After that it is just running on pure heart.  Many people believe that talent is the key ingredient to success, but It is my firm conviction that talent is one of the most over rated-attributes in determining what is required to be successful.  Heart is what separates the average from the exceptional and I have learned in life that heart beats talent every time.  Show me a man or woman with heart and I’ll show you a way to overcome someone else’s talent.

When I watch my daughter play at the park, she can play for hours, she doesn’t care about eating, going to the bathroom.  she will play herself into exhaustion until I have to drag her to leave.  Kids don’t go outside to play for money, or status, or materialistic possessions.  They just play for fun, for the love of the game of the activity.  And I think sometimes we can confuse fun and work.  We expect that if we love what we do that it will always be glamorous, glittery, and fun. But the truth is that the greatest enjoyment is during times of hard work.  Real satisfaction and pleasure comes at the end of the day when you know you gave it your all.  Recreation is actually really overrated.  There is no greater high in the world than the feeling of achieving your goals.

Just yesterday I was a clients house with their family and I asked their son what he wanted to be when he grew up and he said “a mountain biker…he also said that he wanted to learn the language of Thai”.  His parents both laughed and said “that’s not what you really want to do, Thai is not a practical language to learn, and believe me you don’t want to be a mountain biker”.   See as children we don’t think in terms of practicality and logic.  Children think with their imagination, with their heart.  But along the way, we hear the word “no” hundreds of thousands of times before we become adults until our dreams are crushed into societies standards of what is acceptable.  Because many times our dreams and what we love will be silly and impossible in the eyes of others.  But taking the road less traveled in life is quite often the most rewarding.  Afterall, the only way to make the impossible possible is to try the impossible.  If you fail, so what, that’s everyone expects, but if you succeed you change the world.