January 6, 2011 at 7:05 am, by Carl

Years ago when I was coaching professionally, I remember working with my athletes in helping them win the mental war on the path to success.  Everyone knows, of course, that succeeding in athletics takes great effort, strength, flexibility, focus and will.  Or, at least I think they do.  Sometimes, a person has natural raw talent that allows some level of success, at least until they hit the ceiling of that natural ability.  Usually you see that when a very successful high school athlete reaches college and then bombs out.  Or, a talented college athlete can’t really make it at the next level, the professional leagues.


But raw talent is never enough.  It is in the mental war zone that true victory emerges.  This was always true with my athletes.  We worked hard.  In fact, as the head coach of the younger athletes (ages 14-under), I was known for pushing my kids harder than most.  I would often have to counsel parents who wondered when I would let them “have fun.”  I would always counter that they’d have fun when they swam faster and got a personal best time.  It was fun to win a race when you knew your conditioning and training made you better than your competitors, even if some of them had better raw natural talent.


To get there, though, you had to win the mental war.  That is the battle ground where a person determines that they will push through the pain and continue to give solid effort long after their physical ability has declined.  Trust me, in some of the swimming sets I gave to my athletes, you could NOT succeed, or sometimes even finish, without the mental ability to push through the pain.


Sometimes I would deal with a swimmer who, being very tired, simply wanted to quit.  They would protest “but it’s too hard.”  My response was simple and direct–“It’s supposed to be hard.”


Nothing in life worth doing well will ever not be hard.


It doesn’t necessarily mean physically hard, though in athletics that is almost always the case.  Often, the challenge is only in the mental arena.  This, I find, is precisely where my current students and audiences are.   None of them, as it relates to their work with me, are involved in anything physical, yet the step towards greatness, towards real life success is often NEVER taken, or halted on the way, because they complain like my athletes did.


It’s too hard.


My reply remains the same.  For young adults in 2011, for most everyone I know in 2011, we have somehow been seduced by the idea that life should be easy.  That whatever we hope to accomplish will just magically happen.  There are a lot of reasons for this, I believe, far too many to recount here in this post, but suffice it to say, when you see anything or anyone trying to sell you on the notion that you can merely skip the effort, rest assured that person is not legit and is more than likely trying to take advantage of you.


Learning, like accomplishment in swimming, takes great effort.  It takes time.  You must, as with athletics, put muscle memory to work through countless hours of repetition.  And, you must remained focused during your effort so that you aren’t wasting time.  The idea of “practice makes perfect” is untrue—as I taught my athletes, practice makes habits, and if you wish to perform well under pressure, your practice must be focused in order to create great habits.  Learning is the same way.


And mostly, learning, like accomplishment in swimming or any other athletic endeavor, takes winning the mental war.  At some points, we are all lazy.  We all seek ease and rest.  Long ago, Jesus warned about seeking out the broad easy way for life.  Though He was talking about a different context dealing with your spiritual decisions, the point is apt for the rest of us just looking for the road to success.  There is NO easy, broad way to a life of ease and rest.  Thus, you must gear up your mind mentally to push through.


I know its hard.  It’s supposed to be hard.  Now, as you head into the first days of 2011, gear up, get ready, and go live boldly in your life!!