The One Rule That Changed My Life Forever

By Evan Sanders


In my final season of baseball in high school, I took a few trips down to USC to attend pitching camps with a very famous coach named Tom House.

What made Tom House definitely wasn't his baseball career as a MLB pitcher, but rather the fact that he was the pitching coach of the most famous pitcher of all time. Nolan Ryan.

After a dead silent bullpen session that lasted about 60-80 pitches, Tom looked over at me and said words that I would never forget...and will probably never forget for the rest of my life.

He said, "Evan. 10% of the time you are going to be amazing, 10% of the time you are going to suck worse than imaginable, and 80% of the time you are going to be just average.

Champions are made in that 80%."

Isn't that amazing? Isn't it amazing that about 80% of your days you are going to feel completely average. Nothing special about the day. No incredible feeling in your body. Just the feeling of being average.

That may seem like a pretty bitter realization about life, but there's a final piece to all of this that really makes the lesson worthwhile.

You are 100% in control of how your day goes from that first moment you wake up. Yes, you may wake up feeling average, but you get to choose whether you go up or down in the day.

You get the choice of either rising to the challenge or sinking back down into the depths. You get to make the decision to do the hard work and grind through it all or give up completely. But that decision is completely up to you and on you to make.

Those decisions are made when no one is watching and are truly a full representation of your integrity and who you are as a person. Even though those small decisions don't have an audience, they are the ones that will make or break you.

Most of the time you will spend hours and hours working your butt off and no one will ever see you put the time and effort in.

But that's the nature of the beast.

You know how much effort you are giving.

You know how much you put into something and what it really takes to get to where you want to go. If you know that, and you are willing to dedicate the time and make sacrifices, you can do anything with those 80% days and take advantage of what this life has to offer.

To make it to the end of your life knowing that you gave it your all would lead to a lot of big smiles in your final moments. You knew that you really did it and gave your heart the best chance it had to see it's wishes through.

That's the only way to do it. Go big.

So decide that you are going to make the most of those 80% days and become a champion. Have the best year of your life.




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