The Price of Greatness

My week has been filled with production and self-reflection. I’ve had one of those weeks where I can look at everything I have done, and I can be proud. I set a goal this week to be perfect in a certain area, and I accomplished that goal. I put more effort into something this week than I have in over a year. What was my reward for finally getting all this work done? A lecture on how I shouldn’t be happy with one week. A lecture on how until I have a really good streak of perfect weeks, I don’t get the right to celebrate. Why was I being so hard on myself? Before I get to that, I need to talk about something else that has been going on for the last three weeks. I know I’ve talked about sports a lot when I write these articles, the truth is, sports are one of the few things that I am super passionate about. I like a lot of things; I love some things. Sports, especially baseball, that is my first love! Over the last three weeks I have watched as my favorite team went from one of the best teams in baseball, to losing fourteen of their last eighteen games. It’s been very hard to watch. I’ve yelled at my phone, I’ve yelled at the TV, I’ve yelled at my laptop. None of that has worked. Last night I was talking to my parents on the phone, and we were all trying to figure out how this happened. Shouldn’t someone lose their job over this? As I was thinking about everything two different plays crossed my mind. The first play was a ball hit to the centerfielder, no idea how, but he dropped it. This player is a great fielder, but for some reason, he just had a brief moment in time where his head wasn’t in the game. It cost them. The second play involved another player. His only job was to hurry up and run home as fast as possible. The play is kind of hard to explain, but as long he touched home before someone else was out, the run would count. Except he didn’t run as hard as he could have. For some reason at that moment his head wasn’t in the game either. In sports we call these moments, taking the play off. Usually when something like this happens, the score is out of hand, and everyone is just trying to get home. It shouldn’t happen, but it does. The problem is that in both these situations, the game was still close. The issue is that when you have been losing, you don’t get a free pass for something like this. When you want to be great, you don’t get to take plays off. If the score is one to zero or one hundred to zero, you still must focus. If it’s the first quarter or the last second, you don’t get to be lazy. If you want to be great, you don’t get to show up and do nothing. When you have been losing seventy-five percent of the games you have played lately, you don’t get to celebrate for one great play, or for scoring one run. You shut your mouth and get ready for the next play. That is what I was thinking about after the week I have had. It was a good week, but it doesn’t make up for the fact that I should be celebrating my twenty-fifth perfect week, not my first. I know that over the last year I have had some great moments. I might even be able to argue that I have had some perfect moments. But I’m afraid that if I am being honest with myself, I’ve been taking lots of plays off. I’ve had way too many days where I have just gone through the motions. I’ve had way too many days where I celebrated hitting the bare minimum. So, what does that exactly mean? It means it hasn’t been a great year. It means that no matter what happens over the next few months, I did not hit my goals or my potential for the year. I need to spend the next few months trying to finish the year strong. Then I need to regroup and figure out how I can have a year where I don’t have moments where my head isn’t in the game. I can get by with taking plays off. I can get by while having some rough stretches. But I don’t want to just get by. I don’t want to be average. I want to be a leader; I want to set the tone for everyone else. I want to spend the year on the path to greatness, that means I must step up and be consistent every single day. It’s going to be tough, but that is the price of greatness!