The 3 P’s to Success

PASSION: an intense desire or enthusiasm for something.  

PATIENCE: the capacity to accept or tolerate delay, trouble, or suffering without getting angry or upset.  
PERSISTENCE: firm or obstinate continuance in a course of action in spite of difficulty or opposition.

Saturday I was able to spend the day at a seminar covering Olympic Weightlifting technique, which is one item I am very passionate about.  The first P.  My most common fault in one of the lifts, the Snatch, is my patience during the lift. Which was totally exposed yesterday.  The second P.  Once that was exposed over and over and over again, it reached a point where I had to persist through my continued failures if I had any hope for success. The third P. 

I was a few missed lifts away from being disappointed; I just kept rushing through the positions and no matter what the coach was saying I couldn’t slow myself down.  Rep after rep, became, miss after miss. But then I missed a Snatch unlike how I’ve ever missed one, behind me, I never do that, ever.  But that miss felt different, because I knew I was patient on that rep, it finally felt right.  The coach working with me said, “You got it now.  Get back on the bar and go.”  So I did.  And I hit one, and she said “Go again.”  Hit, “Again.” Hit, “Now prove that it wasn’t a fluke.” Hit.  That was seriously an enjoyable experience to fail over and over and over, but with each failure learning, getting better, but still failing, but pushing on and then boom, success.  Pretty cool to me.

Ask yourself what are you passionate about? To the point you’ll give up some sleep or sacrifice some time with friends to follow it, to pursue it, to fight for it, willing to be uncomfortable for it.  That’s passion in my mind. Someone else who is a prime example of those 3 P’s is someone everyone knows, Thomas Edison.  Back when Tommy Eds was 31, he had a passion to illuminate the world.  Pretty bold, but he wasn’t the only one trying to improve incandescent lights.  However, he was the only one willing to pour his entirety of his energy into it, never getting weary or giving up and being patient because he knew he could do it.  He had to test some 6000+ different filaments before he finally found it.  Have you ever failed 5,999 times at anything and still had the persistence to give number 6,000 a shot?  I just learned this about him the other day.  That’s pretty awesome, especially because he was willing to try anything to succeed, any material, no matter how crazy it sounded, he even used beard hair, pretty sure if he had a strand of my beard it would’ve worked a lot sooner…I’m just saying.

Everyone wants everything right NOW.  Where did all the patience go?  The world we live in now is 100% like that.  A kid graduates college and wants that $100,000/year job day 1.  Ha, good luck kid.  It’s reached a point where everyone feels they deserve a hand out and they don’t need to work for it any more.  What happened?  Where did that blue collar mentality go?  That, if you want something, you got to go out and get it, roll those sleeves up, get dirty, break a sweat and earn it.  An analogy I heard referenced once, that I now use rather frequently is, “No one wants to be a white-belt anymore.”  People want that black belt right now.  If that’s the case, just go buy one, heck buy two.  It doesn’t mean anything if you don’t earn it. 

So be patient, it’s ok to be a white-belt the goal is the black-belt, but that takes time, that takes failing over and over and over again.  Persistence will get you wherever you want to go, persist, resist, and fight for your passion.  Saturday I wasn't setting any records with my lifting, but I was having fun, enjoying the process, enjoying the road, enjoying the journey, because at the end of this journey that I’m on  I’ll have the success I’m looking for if I continue to be patient and persist.

Failure is knowledge gained my friends.  And that is The Tank Up Way.

G