Self talk and visualization are the two keys to my success. I believed for that last time, 19 miles, I was indestructible because I took myself in that chair, crapping up my back, peeing blood down my leg, shin splints, stress fractures. I use all that for motivation versus negativity.
I said to myself, who on this f*cking earth would still be going right now? You are. You are.
You gotta be the hardest motherfucker on the planet. Is it true I don't give a f*ck. At that time it got me to the finish line of that f*cking race.
I believed it. I believe it today. I believed it enough to where my body said he's not going to stop.
And that's, I took all the negative things. I need to go to the hospital, this and that. And I used it all.
Who the hell could even get out of that chair? Who the hell could even get out of that chair? You did.
Who the hell would even think about taping stress fractures up? you did All those things I use for motivation. When you really sit back at your life and you are in that dark room and you're looking at where you started from and you tell yourself, God, dog, man, my mom is this way.
My soon to be stepdad got murdered. My dad beat the sh*t out of me. I can't read and write to save my f*cking soul.
I've lied about it to everybody. I've cheated on all these tests. My God, man.
And then you put a goal in your mind How are you going to feel, man, when you accomplish this goal coming from that sh*t? Coming from the f*cking hell you came from. A lot of people start from a good starting point.
They have a good foundation. What if you can surpass all these motherf*ckers? What if everybody who was f*cking way up here started up here And you had, you started with no legs.
You had to grow f*cking legs To even start walking and then crawling and then running and then you start passing people with all this given to them I had to use all this negative sh*t. That was making me weak and Horrible as a person I had to use this as the power that now few of me had to flip it on his head i said 'hold up' This might be exactly what I need. The darkness is Exactly what I need is how you look at your situation and I was looking at it all f*cked up These are the facts, and they are undisputed.
Your problems and your past aren't on anybody else's agenda. Not really. You may have a few people in your inner circle who care about what you're going through, but for the most part, no one gives a sh*t because they're dealing with their own issues and focused on their own lives.
I learned that the hard way. On our drive from Buffalo to 117 South McGuire Street in Brazil, Indiana when I was eight years old, I assumed I was going to walk into the biggest pity party of all time. I expected balloons, cake, ice cream, and big warm hugs.
Instead, it was as if all the pain and terror never happened. Sgt. Jack didn't deal in pity.
He was out to harden my shell, and that's exactly what he did. Pity is a soothing balm that turns toxic. At first, when your family and friends commiserate with you and validate the reasons you have for grumbling about your circumstances, it lands like sympathy.
But the more comfort pity brings you, the more external validation you'll crave and the less independent you will become. Which will make it that much more difficult for you to gain any traction in life. That's the vicious cycle of pity.
It saps self esteem and inner strength, which makes it harder to succeed, and with each subsequent failure, you will be more tempted to pity yourself. Look, I get it. Life isn't fair or easy.
A lot of us are doing a job that we don't want to do. We feel we are above the tasks coming our way and that the world, or God, or the fates have sentenced us to live in a box we do not belong in. When I was a night shift security guard at a local hospital, I felt that work was beneath me, so I showed up every night with a voice in my head screaming, I don't want to be here!
And that infected everything about my life. I ate my feelings, blew up, and slipped into a deep depression. I wanted a different life, but my shitty attitude made it impossible to create one.
Every minute you spend feeling sorry for yourself is another minute not getting better, another morning you miss at the gym, another evening wasted without studying. Another day burned when you didn't make any progress toward your dreams, ambitions, and deepest desires. The ones you've had in your head and heart your entire life.
Every minute you spend feeling sorry for yourself is another minute spent in the dungeon thinking about what you lost or the opportunities that have been snatched away or squandered, which inevitably leads to the Great Depression. When you are depressed, you are likely to believe that nobody understands you or your plight. I used to think that way.
But when Sgt. Jack banged that trash can lid inches from my ear in the morning, he was telling me I wasn't the only little boy who got whipped or suffered from toxic stress. Sometimes, the emotions we feel are a product of a f*cked up past.
Sometimes, we just don't want to get up at 05:00 A. M and do hours of chores before school because it sucks. Sgt.
Jack expected me to perform no matter what I'd been through or what time it was. In response, my feelings got hurt. I stalled getting out of bed until the last possible moment and half assed my way through my mornings as part of a mindless, mopey rebellion.
He didn't give a rat's ass. That grass still needed to be cut, the leaves needed to be raked, and the weeds needed to be pulled. No matter how much I belly ached, this work needed to get done, and it would get done by me.
My feelings were costing me a ton of time because no matter how I felt, there was a task in front of me, and that's all that mattered in the present moment. The only thing that ever matters is the present moment. Yet too many people let their depression or regret hijack their day.
They let their feelings about the past hijack their lives. Perhaps their fiancé left them at the altar, or they got fired without cause. Guess what?
One day, they will pan back and realize that nobody f*cking cared about any of that but them. I don't care what you've been through. I can feel bad for you.
I can have sympathy for you, but my sympathy won't get you anywhere. When I was a young, damaged kid, feeling sorry for myself didn't help me. What helped was cleaning those whitewalls right the first time.
We cannot get time back, so we must be minute hoarders. The earlier I get up, the more I do. The less time I stay in pity party feel sorry for myself land, the stronger I become and the more daylight I see between me and everyone else.
When you separate yourself from the pack by cultivating the values and priorities that lead to greatness, mountains of adversity and hardship become speed bumps, and that makes it easier to adapt to the road ahead and build the new life or sense of self you crave. When I went to live with Sgt. Jack, I was forced to adapt extremely fast.
Everyone was hard on me my whole life, but I came out of all that with lessons learned that stuck with me. Those who learn to adapt survive and thrive. Don't feel sorry for yourself.
Don't feel sorry for yourself. Get strategic. Attack the problem.
When you adapt, you will begin to see everything that comes your way as a stepping stone on your progression toward a higher plane. High paying, esteemed jobs are generally not entry level. You have to start somewhere, but most people see the thankless tasks that must be completed in order to advance as burdens instead of opportunities.
in order to advance as burdens instead of opportunities. That makes it impossible for them to learn. You've got to find the lesson in every shitty task or low wage job.
That requires humility. I wasn't humble enough to appreciate my experience in security, so my attitude was foul as f*ck. I thought I deserved much better, oblivious to the fact that almost everybody starts at the bottom and, from there, it's attitude and action that determine the future.
Humility is the antidote to self pity. It keeps you rooted in reality and your emotions in check. I'm not suggesting you should be satisfied with an entry level job.
I'm never satisfied, but you must appreciate what you have while staying hungry enough to learn everything you can. You need to learn to wash the dishes, flip the burgers, sweat over the deep fryer, sweep up the job site, work in the mailroom, and answer the phones. That's how you build proficiency.
It's important to learn every aspect of any business before you move up. You can't rise if you're weighed down by bitterness and entitlement. Humility hardens your spine and encourages you to stand tall, secure in yourself no matter what anyone else thinks.
And that has tremendous value. I once heard a story about a Master Sergeant in the Army named William Crawford that exemplifies the power of humility. He retired in 1967 and took a job as a janitor at the Air Force Academy in Colorado Springs.
The cadets he cleaned up after paid him little mind, in part because he was reportedly painfully shy The cadets he cleaned up after paid him little mind, in part because he was reportedly painfully shy The cadets he cleaned up after paid him little mind, in part because he was reportedly painfully shy but also because these cadets were elite students on an officer track, but also because these cadets were elite students on an officer track, and Master Sergeant Crawford was just a janitor. Or so they thought. They had no clue that he was also a war hero.
In September 1943, the 36th Infantry Division was getting blitzed by German machine gun fire and mortars during a pivotal World War II battle for a piece of Italian real estate known as Hill 424. The Americans were pinned down with no escape route until Crawford spied three machine gun nests and crawled beneath rivers of bullets to toss a grenade into each of them. His bravery saved lives and allowed his company to advance to safe ground, and after the third direct hit, the Germans abandoned Hill 424, but not before they took Crawford prisoner.
Presumed to be killed in action, tales of his heroism spread among infantrymen and traveled up the chain of command. In 1944, he was awarded the Medal of Honor, the highest decoration in the U. S.
military. Because everyone thought he was dead, his father accepted the medal on his behalf. Later that same year, he was found in a liberated POW camp, oblivious to the hype surrounding his name.
In 1976, an Academy cadet and his roommate read about that battle and connected the dots. Their humble janitor had won the Medal of Honor! Can you imagine what went through their heads?
The Medal of Honor speaks to everything a military person reveres. Not the medal itself, but the courage and selflessness inside the human being who earned that medal. Those students wanted to be him, and there he was, mopping their floors and cleaning their bathrooms every day.
Master Sergeant Crawford was a walking lesson in self esteem, courage, character, and, especially, humility. The way I see it, Master Sergeant William Crawford had figured it the f*ck out. The Medal of Honor didn't change him.
He rose to prominence by staying humble and risking his own life to save others and retired into the service of others. It was never about him, and that gave him strength. People who feel sorry for themselves are obsessed with their own problems and their own fate.
Is that really much different than the greedy and egotistical people who want to feel better than everybody else? The higher I climb in my life, the more I realize how much I need to mop that floor. Because that's where all the knowledge is.
There is no grit at the top, no tests of resolve in steak dinners, five star hotels, or spa treatments. Once you make it in this world, you have to freefall back to the bottom in some way to keep learning and growing. I call this "trained humility.
" It's a shedding of your skin that allows you to take on a mission that no one else can see and do whatever needs to be done next. Trained humility is service but also strength. Because, when you are humble enough to remember that you'll never know it all, each lesson you learn only makes you hungrier to learn more, and that will put you on a path that guarantees you will grow all the way to the grave.
Continued growth only comes when you are willing to be humble.
