Get Picky

(Editors note, this was a blog I started 1/12/12 and just re-discovered my passion for it and decided to finish it.)

At some point you have to own up to your goals. Understand them, get them, work for them. You actually have to put in necessary work to achieve the goals that you set for yourself. Unless of course, failing is an option. For me failing is not an option, maybe a disease or something that I'm always steering clear of, but not an option.

Depending on the goals you set for yourself people won't always understand or get you. They'll think of you as too greedy, or picky, or too hard on yourself. These thoughts are incorrect. You have to be hard on yourself or you become complacent.

Complacency can be defined briefly as self-satisfaction.

Never, become satisfied. After a loss, the first thought is what has gone wrong, what little mistake was made that could have changed the outcome. After a win, there is no thought of the little mistakes. As if a win creates perfection. There is nothing perfect about a win except that you alone achieved it. Those that reach their most challenging goals take a win as a win but look for the mistakes within it.

A goal must be a desire. Something you sacrifice so much trying to achieve that failure forces you to question yourself. What did I do wrong? Maybe I can't improve any more. Is this something I still want to do? A desire must always eat at you. It must be there when you wake. It must be the reason for frustration. It must be the reason for new heights. It must force you to your knees at times.  It is not something spoken about but rather something shown. 

The minute you stop searching for answers, stop obsessing over the little things, forget about the small mistakes you cannot reach those goals. You are complacent. 

Most challenges in life that occur in the pursuit of a goal require a need to want technical perfection. Unattainable but the will most be there. Good cannot be good enough. Great cannot be great enough. Something done well must be done better.

For me a goal becomes a piece of me. Achieving fills a void created solely but the desire to be better. Failure creates a hole that can only be filled by further success. Thes goals drive me every day. They force anger out of me when I cannot grasp a technical aspect of sport. The force a high when I feel a breakthrough. They bring me to my knees during tough weeks. They wake me up in the morning when I've barely slept. They keep me going through work, through practice, through days, weeks, through life.