Success is a Habit

You never change your life until you change something you do daily, said Mike Murdock, a renowned public speaker.  That's right.  The secret of your future is hidden in your daily routine.  Nothing will ever dominate your life that doesn't happen daily. This holds true especially in the field of sports.  It's the daily grinding, day after day that separates the boys from the true champions.  If you want something bad enough, put your entire day effort to pursue it and eventually you will see the result.  It had been said that to be good at something, anything, you must clock in ten thousand hours.  Then only it becomes an unconscious habit that lasts a lifetime.

A successful life is often expensive.  It will cost you something to become a champion.  Time.  Energy.  Focus.  It has to come with a burning desire to be better than the rest.  To soar like an eagle, the saying goes, you can't flock with the turkeys.  To be extraordinary, you must commit to the little extra.  Unless of course you just want to be ordinary.  Which is fine in most circumstances.

Often times we are awed by individuals who seemed ordinary but yet can achieve an extraordinary feat.  The person I can think of is Dean Karnazes, a runner who achieved a surmountable feat of running fifty marathons in fifty days.  It is given that Dean has a special advantage; his body produces a low amount of lactic acid.  That, however, is not the sole reason why he is so agile.  This guy runs everywhere he goes and is always on his feet almost every second he is awake.  He even ran back from New York up to Missouri after completing his fiftieth marathon.  Talk about being a super human!

Again the emphasis here is the daily habit.  Without his conscious effort to get up and run every day, he would not have gotten that far to realize his true potential.  When asked about the secret of his success, Dean replied humbly that he is just an average guy putting one foot over the other.  I was not convinced and so I dug deeper.  After watching some video clips and reading all his books, I found the answer - Pain is my friend.  This guy sought after pain.  Now that is something extraordinary...

How many of us give up at the first sign of fatigue?  Or how about we surrender when stress creeps in?  The very nature of running is to create stress.  Only by stressing ourselves will our body adapts.  Many of us runners loathe the hill.  We silently curse the upward battle as we incline our body in a climb.  Contrary to popular belief, hill run is good.  As you go up you use the quads and as you scale down you use your hamstrings.  These two major muscle groups seldom get tuned on a flat run.  The beautiful thing about the human body is it will adapt to the given situations.  Do it often and long enough, everything will become second nature. 

Always remember the powerful importance of linking your habits to your life purpose.  Habits alone will merely reduce us to being automatons without the definiteness of purpose that governs it.  Just like a beautiful painting requires a backdrop for the paints to reside,  life purpose pulls you towards your destiny.  It's the little thing that keeps you going when the chip is low.  It's the very reason that keeps you going day in day out to pursue your intention.  Seldom a ship that sets sail without a rudder will ever end anywhere except floating aimlessly.  Life purpose is that rudder that sets the course of your actions.  It sets the direction to your destination.

The battle belongs to the persistent.  The victory goes to the one who never quits.  Sometimes you have to do something you dislike to create something you desire.  For every disciplined action, there are multiple rewards.