"Let Me Stop Trying Until I'm Good at IT"

I used to hear this from clients. Nowadays, I catch my kids say it from time to time. What we the coaches hear is, “I need to stop seeing the tutor until I begin understanding the homework that I don’t understand.” If you struggle in a college class because the reading assignments and homework don’t make sense to you, the answer isn’t to quit attending the lectures and the tutoring until they make sense. For some people, it’s just going to take a very long time, and you may still be a C- student. You may have to retake and retake. But it’s ridiculous to stop practicing scales with your piano teacher simply because you’re messy with them when you try at home. It doesn’t click for everyone. And, when it does, certainly not at the same rate.

Clients have seen me gain 70lbs of muscle and lose 70lbs of fat. They’ve seen me live this. They’ve seen me work with clients who lose 150lbs. They’ve seen me work with clients who have every possible health challenge imaginable. They’ve seen me drag my ass in to work when I’ve been at the hospital all night, nearly losing my son, REPEATEDLY. They’ve seen me drag my ass in to work when I had left side paralysis, Lyme disease, muscle tears, surgery, or a business loss in the hundreds of thousands of dollars. They know that whatever bullshit excuse they have, I or another client of mine has one 100X that we aren’t using as an excuse. I KNOW what it means to work harder AND smarter than everyone else and NOT get the reward I “should’ve.” That is no justification for giving up. A lot of success factors are outside of our control.

No matter how good an excuse sounds, YOU make the CHOICE to quit. That is YOUR choice to be below YOUR average. Some people will still end up below an expectation average, but at least with the honor and dignity of having put in the sweat equity, and knowing they did everything WITHIN their control, including having the patience to let something take the amount of time it will require. Don’t give up. Don’t give in. And sure as hell don’t catch yourself saying, “I give up until I’m good at this.”