Passion, Persistence, and Force
I love these three words: passion, persistence and force. My friend Dr. Terrie Werzbacher was recently discussing these words on her daily hotline “Terrie Talks” 210-390-6100. They’re so important in the journey to accomplishing what we want to achieve. When I was starting out as a coach I used these words a lot but they were always stand alone words. I would regularly speak to my teams with passion about having passion for the sport we were competing in, the work it involved and the process it took to get to the end results. Any endeavor without passion isn’t nearly as gratifying, exciting or fun as when you have passion for it. Persistence was probably the world I focused on the most. I learned persistence as a young athlete from the sport of wrestling. Nothing has ever been as humbling to me as learning how to wrestle. The amount of repetition, sweat and discomfort you endure was something that spoke to me as a youngster. Learning how to be persistent has stayed with me throughout my life even in times when I lost my way. It would be persistence that would help me find my way back. And finally the world force. I talked to our athletes about imposing their will on their opponents all of the time. It was about being stubborn when they needed to be and not giving in when things got tough. They had worked too hard and come too far not to do everything in their power to achieve what they wanted in a competition.
It wasn’t until I was late in my career that I began to understand that these words were not stand alone words they were always working in conjunction with one another. They needed each other as much as we needed each of them. If I had passion but lacked persistence then I really wasn’t passionate at all I was merely posing as a person with passion. In essence I was lying to myself. If I had persistence but lacked passion how far could my persistence take me. Eventually without passion my persistence would wane and my mind would wander into new areas of distraction or interest. What about force? How does that figure into all of this? I needed force not just when facing my opponents but when I was facing my own self doubt or when I didn’t feel like doing the work. For example I’m a run streaker and the day I reached my four years of running at least a mile a day everyday for four years I didn’t want to run that day. I have passion for running and the streak itself and with any streak we must have persistence. The force I needed was the will to do it even when I didn't want to.
We need to understand not one word, concept, phrase or program can carry us to where we need to go and neither can an entire arsenal of those things. I needed passion, persistence and force to keep me going. We aren’t always going to be on our game. We have good days and bad days and that is why we need all three of those things together to get us to where we want to go. We have to use our entire tool box to reach our goals. There will be days where I need a hammer and a crowbar and other days when I need a wrench and a screwdriver and other days where I need all four of them. The key is we have to have all of them and not only know how to use them but more importantly we need to know how to use them together.
