Jocko Willink
“Good” said Uncle Jake.
“Good?” I asked. “How the heck is all that good?”
“it’s good because every one of those problems is something you can change. Every one of them.”
A Warrior Kid wouldn’t cry about those problems. A Warrior Kid would do something about those problems.
I told Uncle Jake that I was a WEAKLING! Then he explained to me that I was only weak right now because I had never trained before-never worked out. “In order to make your body strong,” he said, “you have to make it work.” Then he told me that it all started by getting up early in the morning and “GETTING AFTER IT.” I asked if maybe, instead of waking up so early we could just do our work out a little later in the day, perhaps at a more REASONABLE time.
Uncle Jake said NO WAY. He said that pushing yourself began every day with PULLING YOURSEL FOUT OF BED!
“Motivated?” Uncle Jake replied. “I don’t’ worry about motivation, because motivation comes and goes. It’s just a feeling. You might feel motivated to do something, and you might not. The thing that keeps you on course and keeps you on the warrior path isn’t’ motivation. It is discipline. Discipline gets you out of bed. Disciplines gets you onto the pull-up bar. Discipline gets you to grind it out in jiu-jitsu class. If you do those things only when you are motivated to do them, you might do them only 50% of the time. Sure, it’s nice when motivation is there, but you can’t count on motivation. You have to reply on the personal discipline you develop. Like you said: Discipline equals freedom. Got it?”
Wrong answer. There is only one time to start making yourself better: NOW. You need to start now, not tomorrow, not next week, not next month, not next year. NOW. Go throw that food in the garbage and pour that soda down the drain.
‘Washington, Adams. Jefferson. Mmmm… mmmmm…” I knew the next one began with an M, but I just couldn’t remember the rest of it.
“Mad…” Uncle Jake gave me a hint.
“Madison”
“Yes. Now. Look at the paper. And then start over again at the beginning, down the trail you already made, But try to go just a little farther down the trail each time.”
I looked at the paper and saw Washington, Adams, Jefferson, Madison, MONROE.
Uncle Jake flipped the paper over. I started again.
‘Yes. You just go. You see, fear lives in the moment-that powerful moment-between when you decide you are going to do something and when you do it. Once you go-once you start-you won’t’ be afraid anymore.
“This is about everything. Everything. Just think, two months ago, you couldn’t do any pull-ups. At all. Zero. Now you can do TEN. All it took was a good plan and this discipline to execute the plan. To DO IT. That’s what it takes. And you can apply that to just about anything. If you are willing to do the work-you can make things happen. And like I told you, no one else is going to do the work for you. Sure, you might get some help along the way. But you might not. Who knows? What we do know is this: Hard work and discipline are how you achieve things. You have to make things happen. And that is exactly what you did here, and what you can do with almost anything in life. Remember that.
“I will Uncle Jake, I will,” I told him. And he was 100% right. People say you can do anything you want in life. But what they don’t tell you is that you have to work fir.
With hard work, anything is possible.