IN THIS ISSUE: QUITTING, the so-called “dirty” word in sports and life. No one wants to be known as a quitter. No one wants to be labeled as the guy who “just couldn’t hack it .” For many, being called a quitter is the ultimate form of disgrace, the penultimate mark of shame for an athlete. After all, when the going gets rough, the tough are supposed to get going, right? What’s that say about the quitters? That they are taking the easy way out? Perhaps they’re wimps, weaklings or softies? Do they lack heart? Are they character deficient? Let’s face it. In the world of sports, and life for that matter, stick-to-itiveness is the ultimate secret to success. More so than natural talent, physical advantages or luck, your ability to pick yourself back up after a fall, time and time again, your ability to persevere and keep going is the most important factor in you successfully achieving your goals on or off the playing field. However, “quitting” isn’t always as bad as everyone says it is. There are times when leaving your team or sport is the absolute healthiest thing you can ever do. Similarly there are times when continuing to stay in your sport is more of a sign of weakness than strength. In fact, sometimes not quitting is flat out self-destructive and stupid. In this issue of The Mental Toughness Newsletter we will revisit the issue of quitting and take a closer look at this very complex decision. Please keep in mind that quitting is NEVER a black & white issue. In other words, it’s NOT always bad to quit or always good to suck it up and hang in there. The decision to leave your team or sport is always a complicated, multi-determined one that is unique to each individual, the situation he may find himself in and the coaches and/or teammates involved.
Athlete’s Locker – “The magic of never giving up, NMW”
Parent’s Corner – “My boy’s a great football player!”
Coach’s Office – “When kids quit do you take responsibility?”
Dr. G’s Teaching Tales – “2 poems and a short story about quitting”
ATHLETE’S LOCKER
“ The magic of never giving up, NMW!”
OK, so I’ve just told you that any decision to quit your sport is a very complicated one. Furthermore, just because you decide to quit doesn’t make you a loser or a weakling, regardless of what your macho coaches or uninformed teammates may say to you! There are times when making the decision to leave your sport is a sign of strength and health. For example, why should you stay on a team where the coach gets off on publicly humiliating his athletes on a daily basis, where you never have fun, you’re not learning anything and your self-esteem is continuously being stomped on by the head man or one of his assistants? Answer: You shouldn’t! Your sport is not supposed to be an arena for you to “learn” how to be a better victim and take emotional or physical abuse from coaches, teammates or anyone for that matter. You don’t play a sport so that you can feel badly about yourself. You don’t join a team so that you can dread going to practice every day and, while you’re there, count the minutes and hours until you can get to go home. Remember, sports are supposed to be FUN! So in certain situations it’s best if you either changed teams, coaches or just simply took up another sport entirely.
Having said that, I’d like to discuss a different side of this issue, the side that most of the quitting clichés are geared to, (A winner never quits and a quitter never wins). Far too many athletes quit their sport emotionally and/or literally and they are not in a situation like I described above where quitting makes sense or is in their best interests. Too many athletes prematurely give up on themselves as they attempt to pursue a goal. Maybe they’ve run into roadblocks or have had multiple failures and, as a consequence have gotten very badly discouraged. These athletes don’t have an abusive coach. They don’t find themselves cast in the role of the team’s scapegoat. They aren’t mentally or emotionally burnt out. Yet they still choose to leave. This is a big problem.
Let me share with you one of the biggest secrets to success both in and out of sports. It’s not having superior talent or skills, although these certainly help. It’s not having God-given physical advantages over the competition, although these will definitely make your job a whole lot easier. It’s not even being tactically or strategically smarter than everyone else and we know how important this kind of knowledge is to give you that competitive advantage. Very simply, success is much more a product of determination and perseverance. It’s a direct result of your “staying power.” Success eventually comes to those with stick-to-itiveness. It comes as a result of the attitude, “no matter how long it takes and no matter what it takes I will hang in there until I get what I want.”
I witnessed this first hand over the many years that I was an athlete both on and off the tennis court. As an example, when I was first training in Okinawan karate, my Sensei would always tell us that the key to success in the martial arts was just showing up, day after day, week after week, and month after month, nothing more, nothing less. As I continued to train I watched as far more advanced students than myself dropped out and quit the process. At first this puzzled me, especially since many of these students were close to testing for their brown and even black belts. Why did they bail? It made no sense to me. By the time I finally passed my black belt test six years after I began, almost all of the original people that I had started with were long gone, for one reason or another. Me? I just kept plugging along, day after day, week after week, and month after month.
What’s my point? It’s the good news for you: The bulk of your success in any endeavor is almost entirely based on your ability to hang in there NMW. NO MATTER WHAT! If you are truly into your sport, if you have an important goal that you’re chasing, if you’re willing to keep after it regardless of the frustration, hard work and setbacks, then sooner or later your chances of seeing a successful completion will increase tremendously. Does this mean that everyone will reach their goal and live happily ever after? Only in a sappy, “B” rated Disney movie. What it does mean is that if you get in the habit of never giving up, of being like a dog with a bone, of tenaciously going after your goals and doing everything that is humanly possible, then you are more likely to emerge as a champion.
Keeps in mind here that “reaching your goals” is not how I define a champion. To me a champion is someone who truly goes for it, someone who does everything she possibly can in the quest of her goal, someone who does not stop at failures, setbacks or other disappointments. In other words you define yourself as a champion by how you pursue your goal, not by whether you actually reach it. Remember my comments last newsletter about all the Olympic hopefuls who never made it past Olympic Trials. Just because you don’t reach that elusive goal doesn’t mean that you’re a failure. Far from it! What defines your champion status is your “process.” Did you truly go for it? Did you do everything possible to make it happen? Did you totally commit yourself to the quest? If you can answer “yes” to these questions then you can look at yourself in the mirror and see a real winner staring back at you.
Which brings us back to that over-quoted saying that has probably passed through the lips of almost every football coach at every level of the game here in the U.S. : “A winner never quits and a quitter never wins.” Usually when I hear clichés like this my brain gets numb and I start to tune out. If this is your inclination also, then stop yourself! This one’s actually meaningful. Why? When you hang in there and refuse to quit, you open up opportunities for yourself that otherwise wouldn’t be there. These opportunities can only come to you if you hang in there. Similarly, quitting prematurely closes the door on these extra opportunities and therefore on your success. And you want to know what the really funny thing about quitting is? Oftentimes you never really know just how close to success you actually are when you bail out. Without knowing it, so many people quit right on the doorway to success. Because of this, it’s so critical that you adopt an NMW attitude. That is, you will hang in there, NO MATTER WHAT. In the long run, it’s your sustained effort that really counts. This tenacity or inner toughness and a refusal to give in is what champions across all sports are made of. Let me explain:
As an athlete, your conscious mind tends to play little nasty, performance-sabotaging tricks on you. For example, when you get wasted from the pain and fatigue of oxygen debt as a result of hard training, your conscious mind tells you, “no more, I can’t run another sprint. I can’t do another rep. I can’t swim another length. I’m toast.” When you’re tired, your conscious mind tends to want to pull the plug on your efforts. The fact of the matter is that you always get tired and quit mentally, long before your body actually gives out physically. ALWAYS! Simply put, you can always do more than you think you can. ALWAYS! However, when you listen to that little whining voice in your head, you will get seduced into believing that you’re finished, that you can’t do anymore. Fatigue makes a coward of you. It steals your heart and robs you of your strength and will to fight. The urge to quit under these kinds of circumstances is nothing more than a lie.
So what do you need to do when this lying trickster confronts you? Most important, you don’t want to get into the habit of giving in. When you think you can’t go any further, hang in there just a little bit longer. When you doubt that you have a chance and want to fold, stay the course for five more minutes. When you “know” that you can’t do another wind sprint, do one or two more anyway. By continually going against the “I can’t” part of you on a daily basis, you will develop the discipline and confidence to keep going regardless of inner doubts and negativity. In a sense you will be developing the habit of never giving into that little doubting voice in your head regardless of how loud and compelling he/she might be. Remember, no matter what just keep going. Giving into that seductive little voice makes you weaker. Resisting it makes you stronger.
When Jim Dreyer successfully swam across the widest part of Lake Michigan in the summer of 1998 to set a new open water swimming record he knew that the odds were stacked high against him. He had only been swimming 2 and one half years. He had had a lifelong fear of the water from a near drowning when he was three years old. All the “experts” told him that he was totally insane to even try to attempt such a feat. It is interesting that no matter where you are, or what you’re attempting, you’ll always find yourself surrounded by people who, either directly or indirectly will attempt to get you to quit your quest. These individuals feed the natural doubt that resides inside of all of us. If you listen to these “naysayers,” they will weaken your resolve.
Dreyer told me that he didn’t want to have anything to do with all these “experts.” He said, “There were those who could find a thousand reasons why this feat couldn’t be accomplished, much less by someone with a fear of the water who had just learned to swim. I didn’t want to hear any of these reasons. If I had allowed others to draw limits around what I was capable of accomplishing I may never had made it to that Wisconsin beach, much less the Michigan shore.” So instead, Dreyer surrounded himself with people who supported his dream and believed in his ability to accomplish it.
However, the real key to Dreyer’s ultimate success was his refusal to quit, especially when everything was going wrong. His planned swim was supposed to be 43.2 miles in length and estimated to take him 25 hours. Unfortunately, all to soon into his quest he encountered a relentless current that stretched the swim to 65 miles and ended up taking him 41 hours! He swam nearly blind when his eyes got infected because of leaky goggles. He swam sick to his stomach from ingesting boat fumes. He swam with severely inflamed shoulders and at times with cramps that paralyzed his legs.
However, through it all, Dreyer refused to quit. He refused to give in. He explained: “I did not allow quitting to be an option. I vowed to myself that I would swim until I ran out of water in Michigan or until I was pulled from the water. I came to realize that my body giving out was a possibility. Quitting, however, is a CHOICE; a choice I would not allow myself to make. I understand that every time a person quits, it becomes that much easier to quit the next time. I know what it feels like to want to quit, but I’ve yet to experience what it’s like to give in to that feeling and I wasn’t going to let this be the first time. It all came down to how badly I wanted it!”
Because of Dreyer’s refusal to give in to the urge he successfully completed his swim. The next summer he crossed lake Ontario in world record time after two initial failures. In the summer of 2000 he ran a marathon and then finished it off by swimming across Lake Erie. This summer, 2004, he again attempted to cross Lake Superior after multiple failures. Because of his refusal to give up, Dreyer has turned the impossible into a reality.
Question your “I can’ts.” Challenge your self-imposed limits. Don’t listen to the part of you encouraging you to take the easier way out. There is no real easy way out. Quitting is ultimately very painful, more painful even than keeping on. Why? In the long run, the quitter has to continually face himself when he looks in the mirror. While he may be able to fool others, he can’t fool that guy looking back at him every day. Push yourself. Take risks. Go for it and refuse to give in. ALWAYS. You know the cliché: Pain is temporary while pride is forever.
PARENTS’ CORNER
“ My boy’s a great football player!”
OK so your kid doesn’t really want to play football. He hates the long hours of practice, the military style leadership and the “bruise dujour” thing doesn’t get him too excited either. But you really want him to play. You want him to be a man’s man, to suck it up and dish it out as much as he’s taking it. However, he doesn’t want any part of that Neanderthal, macho B.S. He’d rather play tennis or run cross-country, some “sissy” sport where the contact is almost non-existent or they put up a divider between you and your opponent so no one will get a boo boo. And you know what else? He’s sick and tired of hearing about your glory days in high school as the star running back and how you lost your college scholarship chance because of an unlucky injury right at the beginning of that all important junior year. In fact, that’s the point he keeps trying to make with you whenever you bring the subject up. You played football and look where it got you: A poorly timed, season-ending injury and a bum knee to this very day! No, he’s not interested in that kind of thing, thank you very much.
So the truth finally came out over that special steak dinner that you personally prepared for him to “celebrate” his making the varsity squad as just a freshman. What an accomplishment! Come on! Admit it. While you were grilling those sides of beef your imagination ran wild. You had detailed fantasies about your boy getting a big time college scholarship. What could be better now? If you couldn’t do it, your boy could! You even imagined yourself in the stands watching him start for a Michigan or a Notre Dame. Hearing the bands playing, that huge crowd cheering for him. How very proud you’d be. Who knows? Maybe he’d even get good enough to go on and play in the NFL….And then you wake up, dinner is almost over, and you feel like gagging on your steak.
First he tells you that the coaches are excited because they think he has a lot of potential and can really help the team out. That’s my boy! Then he tells you that they want to use him a lot this season, maybe even start him in some of the games if things go well. Attababy! You’re starting to beam with pride and excitement. The college game day fantasies are starting up again. The bands are playing. You can smell those wonderful aromas from the tailgate barbecues. The crowd roars…But then suddenly the boy gets flat out weird on you. He says that he’s “not sure about all that stuff, like it’s not that important to me! I mean it’s great that they like me and all….” And as he pauses you can feel the barely digested meat and potatoes beginning to work its’ way back up your digestive tract accompanied be a generous amount of stomach acid. And then he drops the big one on you, “Dad, I’ve been thinking. I don’t want to play football this season. In fact I don’t want to play football at all. I’m not having that much fun and I’m just not cut out for the game. I’d much rather run cross country instead or maybe play ultimate. You know the school has a really great ultimate team.”
You sit back speechless, too stunned to even respond. There are so many things that you’d like to say to him to get him to see the ridiculousness of his ways. The words and phrases run through your head fast and furious. “What, like are you an idiot or are you on drugs? You want to QUIT the team? You want to quit football and chase a flippin Frisbee around?!!! Real men don’t quit football! You’d be letting your coaches down if you did. You’d be letting your teammates down. Why son, you’d be letting your country down. It’s downright un-American to not like football. And, to be perfectly honest with you, you’d be letting me down too. How do I tell you how terribly disappointed I am in you. Why on earth would you blow all that talent and ability? Son, don’t you understand that you have a chance for a college scholarship here? Do you know how much money we’re talking about? You have a chance to be great, to be the player that I never was. You’re running away from all of that, literally. This is the biggest decision of your life and you’ll regret it forever if you quit now….blah, blah, blah.
However, your one saving grace as a parent and a dad in this situation is that despite your shock and incredulity, and the powerful emotions that are washing over you like a Florida hurricane, you still manage to retain just enough brain cells to keep your mouth completely shut. In fact, all you do is just sit there and listen. You don’t allow yourself to speak from your emotions. You know that if you open your mouth when you’re emotional, you will say hurtful, stupid things that you will later regret. You understand that whenever anyone speaks from their emotions, what they say is never burdened by the heavy weight of logic or intelligence. You don’t lecture. You don’t get judgmental. You make an honest effort to step inside your son’s shoes and really try to feel what he’s feeling.
Let’s face it. As parents our reflex reaction when dealing with our kids is to be much too long on the lecturing and far too short on the listening. We tend to forget that once upon a time, a long, long time ago, we were actually adolescents. Can you remember how you use to feel when you were this age and your parents talked at you instead of to you? Lecturing is talking at someone and it’s the fastest way I know of turning a child off. Want to get them to quickly tune you out? Don’t listen to a word that they’re saying, don’t ask them what they think or how they feel and instead, just blindly impose your version of right and wrong upon them. And if you’re really going to listen, this means that you have to be silent inside. You can’t be internally planning your rebuttal while your child is speaking. If you do that, you won’t end up hearing a word that your son or daughter is saying.
So here’s the deal about football or whatever sport you or your spouse may be overly invested in your child playing. It doesn’t matter how much talent your child has. It doesn’t matter what kind of potential the coaches have told you rests deep within his DNA. It doesn’t matter if he may have a legitimate shot at a college scholarship. It matters even less what your skill level, background in or knowledge of the sport is. And it certainly doesn’t matter what you, as a parent want for your child. The tough stuff to swallow here is the only thing that really matters is your child. His feelings and needs matter, not yours. His happiness and emotional well-being matter. His feelings about the sport are important. Does he really love playing? Does it ring his bell so-to-speak? Is that truly where his passion lies? Also, the kind of relationship that you and your spouse choose to cultivate with him really matters. These are the things that are vitally important and they transcend what you see as his potential athletic career in a particular sport.
If your child comes to you with a desire to hang up her soccer cleats you need to listen to her explanation. Why does she want to quit? Is she unhappy playing? Does she have a problem with the coach or another teammate? Is she burnt out and simply need a vacation from the sport. Is there a different sport she’d rather be playing? Listen carefully to her reasons. Listen carefully to her feelings. Try very hard to put aside your own agenda, needs and feelings about her continuance in the sport. Her sport is NOT about you, it’s about her. Depending upon her responses, you then need to help her make a decision that is best for her. Far too many parents erroneously think that if a child decides to quit a sport, this will start an unhealthy precedent that will follow them around through adulthood. That is, whenever things get too difficult, they’ll always opt for the “out option.” Personally I think this fear is grossly exaggerated. Remember, there are many situations in youth sports that you don’t want your child remaining in. If she’s unhappy, burnt out, being scapegoated or emotionally abused, or is just plain not having fun participating, then leaving is frequently the best option.
COACH’S OFFICE
“ When kids quit do you take responsibility?”
(Family discussion around dinner table between mother, father and
12 year old son, Frank)
Mom: How was the game today, sweetie?
Frank: (near tears) It was awful. I hate baseball. I want to quit!
Dad: (completely taken aback) What do you mean you hate baseball? I thought you loved the game. What gives?
Frank: I just hate it. It’s no fun anymore and I’d rather do something else.
Dad: Did something happen today that’s got you so upset?
Frank: (crying) Well, for one thing I cost the team the game. We lost because of me and I suck!
Mom: Honey I don’t understand. You’re the best pitcher the team has. Why do you feel like you suck?
Frank: Well, for one thing the coach told me I choked. He yelled at me for blowing the game in front of everyone. He’s right, you know. I should just go back to the soccer team.
Dad: What exactly did the coach say to you Frank?
Frank: (crying) He screamed at me when I walked in a run and then he pulled me out of the game. He said that I single-handedly lost the game for us, that I was a choke and he wanted me to apologize to my teammates for it. He made me feel like a complete idiot and I don’t ever want to go back.
As a coach do you ever stop and wonder why some of your kids prematurely drop out? Do you ever follow up with these child-athletes to take the time to understand their reasons for leaving? Do you ever question what role, if any, that you may have played in the athlete’s quitting? Do you know that if you as a coach can even stop and ask yourself these kinds of questions, then there’s still hope for you! That’s right! All is not lost as long as you’re still willing to examine your role whenever a player decides to quit your team. All too often coaches get unbelievably rigid when one or more of their players drops out, defensively blaming the players for the leaving and not taking any responsibility whatsoever. “Jenny was much too soft. She just couldn’t take my training regime!” “Oh, Max was nothing more than a crybaby. Whenever things didn’t go his way he would start whining and complaining.” “Good riddance to them. We don’t need players like that on our squad!”
Well guess what? The vast majority of times that kids prematurely quit a sport it’s because of the coach. It’s NOT because the athletes were soft. It’s not because the athletes were babies! It’s not because the athletes were quitters, spoiled or even selfish! Of course you will occasionally run into these kinds of athletes and these reasons for quitting. However, all too often athletes leave their sport because of the coach. The coach is a yeller. The coach is emotionally abusive. The coach regularly uses humiliation and embarrassment as a “teaching tool”. The coach doesn’t listen. He’s unfair. He has favorites. He’s dishonest. He’s flat out mean. The kind of relationships that the coach knowingly or (much more oftentimes) unknowingly sets up with his athletes ultimately becomes the force that drives athletes from the team and sometimes completely from the sport. A bad relationship will kill a child’s enjoyment, sabotage the learning process and interfere with performance. Once the fun has left, the child won’t be too far behind.
Should you care about this as a coach? Should it matter to you why someone leaves your program? Should you care if some athlete seems to be “too sensitive” or a “head case?” Only if you are committed to excellence and have a serious interest in taking your coaching game as far as possible. In fact, if you truly care about the profession, then you should be troubled whenever one of your kids wants to leave your program. If you’re in the habit of consistently losing more than one athlete a season, then you should be deeply troubled. And the first place that you need to look for answers is in the mirror, at yourself!
Excellence in coaching is built on personal awareness as much as it is on a knowledge of the game. In fact, without personal awareness, your ability to impart your knowledge is seriously hampered. Simply put, you as the coach need to be aware of who you are and the kind of impact that you have on your players. Specifically, you need to know when you’re feeling angry or hurt by something a player or one of their parents has said or done. You need to know when you’re feeling sad. You need to know when you’re involved in a power struggle or feeling threatened. You need to be aware of what feelings you take onto the field or court with you from your personal life that have absolutely nothing to do with coaching or your athletes. Without an awareness of your “personal process” or own feelings, then you are much more vulnerable to unconsciously (unknowingly) acting out those feelings on your athletes.
I hear complaints about this kind of coach at almost every level, across all sports. Their programs may consistently under achieve. Their athletes may struggle with performance problems. Their teams may be “drama central,” with serious interpersonal conflicts between members dominating everyone’s energy and attention. The school or league administrators may have gotten numerous complaints about the team’s “leadership” and given them warnings. Players may have prematurely quit in the middle of the season. But through it all, this kind of coach remains totally oblivious to his/her role in the problems and his impact on his athletes. Instead, the coach is completely convinced that others are always to blame. This kind of coach is so defended that he has closed himself off from any and all outside feedback. When you allow yourself to get this pig-headed and close-minded as a coach, then you have taken your coaching to a new level, beyond ineffectiveness to outright destructiveness.
Keep in mind that as the coach you are in a significant position of power. How you interact with your athletes, what you say and don’t say, your actions and facial expressions all powerfully determine that child’s experience. You may be totally oblivious to your own passing comments, eye rolls or snickers as you conduct practice, but the athlete experiences the effect of these in very powerful ways. There’s no question that athletes will sometimes grossly overreact to something that you say or do. Your heart may be in the right place and still they may experience an interaction with you as hurtful or mean. However, if you are aware of your own process and take the time to watch how your kids respond to your communications, then you can undo the negative effects of their exaggerated responses. In order to do this, however, you have to be willing to pay attention to your own behavior. You have to be willing to take an honest look at what you said and how you said it and then ask yourself whether the child’s negative reaction had any basis in reality.
It’s unfortunate that some coaches actually think that doing this represents a sign of softness or weakness. For these coaches, the arena of emotions is one that is totally foreign and leaves them feeling clumsy and inadequate. No “touchy-feely” sissy stuff for them. They’re tough. They’re hardcore. They deal with their feelings of inadequacy by ignoring both their own feelings and those of their players. As a consequence many of their interactions have the potential to be both insensitive and hurtful. If a young athlete has enough of these negative experiences with this kind of a coach, he/she will soon quit.
When an athlete of yours quits, don’t be afraid to take a look at yourself. Don’t be afraid to ask yourself what, if anything you could’ve done differently. Have the courage to check out with that athlete and his or her parents, what went into the decision to quit. Don’t be afraid of feedback. Honest feedback from outside sources, regardless of how painful, will only make you a better coach in the long run. Keep in mind that sometimes an athlete’s quitting has absolutely nothing to do with you and your style of coaching. Kids quit for a wide variety of reasons, many of which you have little to no control of. As a coach, however, you want to make very sure that you are not the reason that the child-athlete is leaving.
DR. G’S TEACHING TALES
“2 poems and a short story about quitting”
DON’T QUIT
(The Edge)
When things go wrong, as they sometimes will,
When the road you’re trudging seems all uphill,
When the funds are low and the debts are high,
And you want to smile, but you have to sigh,
When care is pressing you down a bit-
Rest if you must, but don’t you quit.
Life is strange with its twists and turns,
As every one of us sometimes learns,
And many a person turns about
When they might have won had they stuck it out.
Don’t give up though the pace seems slow-
You may succeed with just one more blow.
Often the struggler has given up
When he might have captured the victor’s cup;
And he learned too late when the night came down,
How close he was to that golden crown.
Success is failure turned inside out-
So stick to the fight when you’re hardest hit-
It’s when things seem worst that you mustn’t quit.
KEEP SWIMMING
(author unknown)
Two frogs fell into a deep cream bowl.
One was an optimistic soul.
But the other took the gloomy view.
“ We’ll drown,” he lamented without much ado,
and with a last despairing cry,
he flung up his legs and said, “Goodbye.”
Quote the other frog with a steadfast grin,
“ I can’t get out but I won’t give in,
I’ll just swim around till my strength is spent,
Then I’ll die the more content.”
Bravely he swam to work his scheme,
And his struggles began to churn the cream.
The more he swam, his legs a flutter,
The more the cream turned into butter.
On top of the butter at last he stopped,
And out of the bowl he gaily hopped.
What is the moral” It’s easily found…
If you can’t hop out, keep swimming around!
“ Dig a little deeper”
A story is told about two brothers who sold all they had back East and headed West for the promise of great riches during the California gold rush. Early on in their prospecting, they discovered a vein of the shining ore, staked a claim and proceeded to get down to the serious business of getting the gold ore out of their mine. At first, all went well and their spirits and bank account soared. But then a very strange thing happened. The vein of gold that they were working on mysteriously disappeared. It just simply dried up. They were at the end of their rainbow and that pot at the end was suddenly very much empty. However, the brothers continued to desperately pick away, but without much success. Finally they got discouraged and gave up in disgust.
They sold all of their equipment and claim rights for a few hundred dollars and took a train back home. The man who bought the claim hired an engineer to examine the rock strata of the mine. The engineer advised him to continue digging in exactly the same spot as the former owners had, but to dig a little bit deeper. A week or two later and three feet deeper, the new owner struck gold, a huge, lucrative vein! Instantly he became a wealthy man beyond his wildest dreams.
Just a little more persistence and a little more deeper digging and the brothers would have reaped the same reward. There’s gold in you too. You have unlimited ability, untapped potential. You have the ability to do things you never imagined. Just because you haven’t found that potential yet doesn’t mean it’s not there. You have to be persistent. You have to be patient. And you have to keep digging!
If you have a performance difficulty or you’re consistently underachieving, call me today!
Contact Me or Call
413-549-1085
