A short nugget

I had a whole post written about how good I've been feeling as of late, but truth is, it was a horribly written entry. (That's not to say that I need to be miserable to write well...) So instead, I'm going to discuss a piece of advice that I've spoken before. It's something I've learned from experience of my own, rather than having been given to me by one of my mentors.

The sports cliche is right: To be number one, you need to train like you're number two. However, what the cliche doesn't say is that to be number one, you also need to believe that you're number one. If you train to be number two and completely believe that you are number two, guess what: you're going to fall short when you face number one. It's a self-fulfilling prophecy.

That's not to say cockiness is a necessity in victory, but some of it needs to be there internally.

This is an attitude needed with anything in life.

Simply put: expect to fail and you will. (Just a note: 'expect to win and you will' is not always true, per se, because that takes work. But all the work in the world and the expectation of failure will always lead to failure.)

I hope that a future version of me will be struggling with something and stumble upon this and be reminded of all the work it took to be in this place again and the attitude adjustment I needed.

In the meantime, I hope someone out there stumbles upon this and can see how far I've come since this blog started 358 days ago and see that I really learned this lesson, perhaps the hard way, and takes it to heart.

Which reminds me:
Next week: The first blogiversary: a year in review