Showing Up…Then Showing Up Consistently

The spring of my junior year in high school, the state university football team held a clinic about forty-five minutes from my home town. I showed up with a handful of my high school teammates and while I don’t remember much about the clinic, I do remember competing hard and making some diving catches.

Looking back at the recruiting process, the opportunity to play in front of those college coaches put me on that football program’s radar. They were the first school to offer me a football scholarship. A few more followed, but their interest was largely based on the interest that my state university had in me.

As a high school athlete, I thought that if you were “good enough,” then programs would find you. Unless you are an elite athlete playing for one of the best high school programs in the county, this simply isn’t true. You need to take the initiative and show up in places where you can get noticed early and often. Seek out opportunities to excel. If I went to more college football programs’ clinics and camps, I would have received scholarship offers from bigger schools. Alternatively, had I not demonstrated the initiative to attend that clinic, I would have likely received none.

In addition to discovering the importance of initiative in pursuing your own path, the head coach’s message to the athletes at his clinic was also insightful. I distinctly remember him telling the group that you need to do something to make yourself better every day. His message was that small, consistent and disciplined effort aggregates and compounds over time and leads to mastery.

Not only does doing the work daily set you up to perform at a high level, but more importantly, the consistent effort builds confidence, which in turn fosters your initiative, motivating you to create opportunities for yourself.

Where do we need to show up? Let’s have the discipline to show up more consistently. – Spiral up