Music: Sublime: Badfish
This post is about motivation, and as you are reading my blog (and I would love to read yours) I consider us, at least in part, a team. So I want you fired up for this post, and here is Al Pacino in Any Given Sunday giving one of my favorite movie speeches of all time.
I started this:
One of the things you deal with frequently after knee surgery is motivation…
But then I stopped.
The spotlight effect is a psychological principal where you believe you are the only one having these kinds of problems, that the spotlight is on you. I believe there is a term for the inverse, and that would be that you think everyone experiences things in the same way you do. It’s been years since I took psychology, so if you know the terms better than I do, by all means.
One of the things I deal with. Me. In my knee surgery and probably in my life if I were being honest (Would I lie to you?) is keeping myself motivated. If you were to go and talk to the critics I have a accumulated over my lifetime, you would probably get a pretty similar report from all of them. As I would guess:
More capable than most, perceptive, supremely talented in generating ideas and wording things in a way most people would not think too. However, unfocused, does not apply himself, does not take things seriously enough. Starts out like gangbusters but ultimately does just enough to get by.
Motivation is really an unfair thing to struggle with, mostly because it should be so easy do something about it. In almost every situation I have encountered in my life I have been smart enough, talented enough to figure out how to succeed. One of the things I have realized I have gotten a little older, however, is you are not always going to succeed. The times I have not succeeded are probably motivation related.
I was going to save this for the end, but I’m ready for it now:
Knee surgery, and being out of commission for six months, certainly literally and figuratively qualifies as life beating you up a bit. In my rehab I have probably overall done a pretty good job, but I can’t say at any point that there was nothing left on the table. Well, except for my jump roping bender last week.
Now that I can run (first mile yesterday at 10:20. Embarrassed, but honest), I surely will be doing that because it is something I enjoy. In knee surgery though, everything you read says that even though the every day exercises you can do don’t feel like they are making a big difference but they are.
So the question is, Joel (see? usually I am talking to YOU) what will you do from here? Knowing the right answers isn’t enough. Asking the right questions isn’t enough. Do you have what it takes to get up every morning, look yourself in the mirror, and get everything you can out of every Monday-Sunday?
One more and I’m done. If you wouldn’t play for Ray Lewis you don’t have a pulse:
Every Inch
Get back up and keep moving forward.
And it comes through effort, because effort is between you, and you.
The ACL Bomb 