I heard a great quote on Sportcenter this morning from
Dwyane Wade (Miami Heat) about his mindset during the last few minutes of last night NBA Finals game, which the heat won in the final minutes.
Stewart Scott asked, “2:18 to go, coming out of a deadball, you, Lebron, and Chris had a conversation. What did you say to each other?”
At that point everyone is tired, LeBron is hurting, we just looked at it each other and said, listen, it hurts to be a champion, it’s going to hurt to be a champion. It’s not going to feel good for you to get to that point. The pain will feel a lot better if you get this win. The pain is going to feel better when you’re one step to everything you’ve been striving for your whole life, 27 years plus, let’s do it. No excuses.
If you think achieving your dreams is going to be easy, then you’re not dreaming big enough or you don’t understand the process. Pain is not apart of every step along the way. The entire road isn’t tough. But when it does get hard and painful, you have to find a way to keep pushing and fight your way through.
When it gets hard you’re very likely doing something right! You’ve hit a wall, and that wall (and maybe many more like it) stands between you and your dream. Who’s going to win, you or that wall?
Too often when adversity strikes, when things get hard, when the chips are stacked against you, it’s easy to quit. Easy in that moment. But the short-term relief you get from the burden of achieving something great (for you), you sacrifice from the long-term. You think it’s easy to quit, but the pain of wondering “what if” can sting for much longer.
Breaking through that wall is going to be hard. If it were easy, it wouldn’t be there! Step-up, bear-down, man-up, buckle-down, and figure a way through. Besides, you really don’t want it to be too easy. The easier a dream is to achieve, the less satisfaction, happiness, or joy do you get from it. The tougher the road, the bigger the reward.
