elitefts™ Sunday edition
True Pursuit of a Dream
It’s easy to say that you have a dream. We hear them all the time:
“I want to be an All-American”
“I want to get a scholarship to ____________ University”
“I want to make it to the pros”
Vocalizing a dream requires a very small percentage of the total musculature within the human body. Making a dream actually happen requires a lot more than just the 640 muscles in your body, it requires every spare ounce of blood, sweat, and tears, a heart that knows no weakness, and a mind that stays focused on the path ahead.
But it all starts with the latter: your mind.
If your mind isn’t tunnel vision-set on your dream, the chances of that dream happening become much more limited, no matter what you do. What do I mean by tunnel vision? I mean that your vision should figuratively outline the words MY DREAM, and include nothing else. When that vision begins to open up more, that’s when distractions can start seeping into the picture. These distractions can start small, but act as a gateway into significantly bigger distractions that can derail you from any path that was leading you to your dreams. We know what these distractions are, and they aren’t just limited to alcohol and drugs; they can come in the form of running with the wrong crowd, wasted time, unhealthy dating relationships – you name it. That’s not to say you won’t be exposed to those things, but if your tunnel vision is locked in, you’re able to brush these potential derailments off like they're nothing. It’s not that you’re scared of what one drink/puff will do to you, it’s that your dream means so much more to you than those things.
Then your heart has to be in the right place.
We hear it all the time, but what does it truly mean to have heart? It’s an unrelenting spirit through the mountain peaks and valleys of your dream’s path. This means being able to pursue your dream at the same intensity, regardless if the path is at its toughest or its easiest. It’s when you’ve just finished what you thought was the last 100-yard sprint, your chest is ready to explode with collapsing seeming inevitable, and the coach calls everyone back for an overtime sprint. Your legs are on fire and begging for a rest, while the devil on your shoulder tells you to just quit, because it’s the easiest path to take right now. Your mind is locked in though, so while the sweat pouring into your eyes may blur your sight, your vision remains clearer than ever. Then, it is your heart that makes you run that unexpected sprint as if your life depended on you finishing first, not letting one teammate beat you. Yes, one 100-yard sprint isn’t going to make a world of difference in your physical preparation, but it will do wonders in your mental preparation, knowing you could get yourself back on the line to bust your ass for one last all-out sprint when you’re already near complete exhaustion.
Lastly, be prepared to pay heavily in sweat, blood, and tears.
Of course, realizing a dream doesn’t come without hours of intense training throughout the course of a week. It is repping out weights that would make an average person collapse; tearing muscle fibers down past the point of extreme discomfort, pushing a Prowler® until flu is nearly induced, or running hills until your legs can no longer be lifted. It’s getting to that last squat rep, and despite the fact that you spent five seconds getting the previous rep up, you drop down to parallel, and grind out the last rep unspotted, ready to collapse after racking it. You have to be willing to train relentlessly, and that includes your weaknesses, which need to be worked on to the point where they become your strengths. This ensures that nothing within your control can ever be thought of as being a liability to reaching your dream.
You also have to accept that any dream relating to sports/lifting is going to literally and figuratively require a blood donation. This means being willing to fight through a bruised and battered football camp body to still block that linebacker just as hard as you did on Day 1, because your ability to move up the depth chart depends on it. Injuries are an inevitable part of physical competition, but one key measure of a dream catcher (borrowed from Robert Griffin III) is the ability to fight and play through a minor injury or stay motivated through a major one. A dream catcher will still make the big play despite a knee that has ailed them for the entire season, and will live in the training room because their broken ankle deters them from the playing field. They will rehab just as hard, if not harder than they train, because their injury is directly preventing them from realizing their dream.
And you have to realize that no great dream was ever accomplished without failure. There is little to nothing that can be learned from success, but a whole lot to be learned from failure, and it is the opportunist who takes advantage of this available knowledge that thrives and comes back from failure. No one ever remembers the man who fell down seven times and didn’t get up that last time, but everyone remembers the man who got up that last time and finally was able to live his dream. His story is the stuff that Hollywood lives off of, but no one can fully appreciate it unless they actually lived it themselves. It's the culmination of every overtime defeat that led to a championship victory, every injury that forced him to improve a weakness until it became a strong point, and the moment he first decided to stop partying and start using that time to get better. Failure is a catalyst for success, but only to those who realize its potency in making a dream into reality.
It is with my dreams and personal experiences that I wrote this, hoping to give people who have a dream, but aren’t quite sure how to pursue it an inside perspective from someone who is more motivated than ever to live their dreams. Take what I wrote and apply it to your own situation, because dreams exist in a wide range of formats and every dream deserves the same opportunity in life: to be realized. If the aforementioned points are sacrifices you can see yourself making, get off the computer and go start making your dreams happen right now; don’t wait until tomorrow.
A few anecdotes to leave you with:
- Rather than focusing on the things you can’t control (such as height), focus on everything within your control and improving those things as much as possible.
- Don’t let the fear of failure drive you; rather, let your driving force be your desire for success.
- If you haven’t reached your dream, there is no excuse to skip an opportunity to get better.
- Let your skill be doubted before your work ethic ever is. Skills can be developed because of work ethic, but work ethic cannot be developed because of skills.
- Dreams should always be pursued for yourself first, then others (others who have supported you along the way, not the approval of others), not the other way around. If it ever becomes reversed, ask yourself why you are pursuing that dream.
- A saying from my high school coach, “The body achieves what the heart believes the mind conceives.”
- Finally, as Robert Griffin III said after being drafted No. 2 overall in this year’s NFL Draft, “Don’t chase your dreams, catch your dreams.”