Everyone gets 24 hours in a day. It does not matter if we are talking about you, Michael Jordan, Lebron James, or Usain Bolt. Time is the great equalizer of people. Since time is limited and we do not know our time of death, it means we have to make the most of the seconds, minutes, hours and days. Athletes sacrifice a lot in order to be successful.
To make the most, it implies that we must give something up. Early in our pursuit of success, we can’t have it all. You can’t be sleeping getting ready for practice and at that huge party at the same time. It just does not work that way. You have to give something up if you want to get something else.
Athletes Sacrifice Immediate Desire
If you want to put in minimal work and see tremendous results you may as well stop reading now. That is the problem with social media and the internet; it has made society more impatient than ever.
If the website does not load fast enough, we go to another page.
If we don’t get immediate likes or praise we take things down.
It’s a sad concept, and it WILL set you up to fail if you are not careful.
You have to be able to delay gratification. Delaying gratification means you give up the urge to have things come to you right away. Doing this can pour into every area of your life.
When you want to buy something, save 5% of your money towards it each month.
If people encourage you to take the easy route that will take less time, stick to taking the longer less traveled path that will be more rewarding.
Take for example an athlete growing up that had to take public transit to school each morning, and it would take them about an hour and a half.
Sure, they could have gone to a school that was around the corner from their house, but the other school was better for them. They go through the pain of 3 hours of travel a day to get to what they wanted.
Then grind into their sports and their schoolwork and everything that they touched. Only to realize that the shiny gold thing that is easy to grasp is only fooled gold. I wanted the real stuff but the only way to get it was to grind.
Athletes Sacrifice Pride
Pride is one you don’t hear a lot of people talking about, but if you want to be great, you need to put it aside. It is what I like to call a learning inhibitor.
Pride blocks you’re learning because most people are too proud to shut their mouth and ask for help. Great athletes have mentors all around them.
Coaches
Parents
Teammates
They lean into these people for guidance through their lives. Anyone who thinks they know everything knows nothing and their pride will block their success.
Understand that when you sacrifice the pride now, you will have so much more to be proud of later on. Before one can lead, one must learn FIRST! It is your duty if you want to be great.
Athletes Sacrifice Time
You have to sacrifice time to be great. If you look at your schedule and it looks similar to the plans of the average person, then you will live an average life.
Do you think Kobe Bryant lived with an average schedule? Or do you believe the average sacrificed their time and put up 500 shots a day?
He could have been doing 1000 other things with all that time he spent playing basketball. He made a choice to spend his time working on the court.
What can you do to spend more time getting better and what would you have to give up to do so. Like we said early on in the article, we never create more time, we can only change our schedule.
The sacrifice of time is about spending less time doing things that do not contribute to the success that you want. Then take that time and putting it into being a better athlete.
Athletes Sacrifice Personal Life
There is no doubt that out of all the sacrifices athletes make, the personal life is the hardest. You may be close to your family, or be in a long-term relationship.
The truth is that working to be a successful athlete will hurt your personal life no matter how you look at it.
From the above point of sacrificing your time is where this problem starts. Just think, if your significant other wants to go on a date and get burgers and you know that will mess with your diet.
To change your mind, they might say “it is just one burger, you will be fine!”
Athletes Sacrifice, What Do You Do?
Do you give in to make them happy? Or do you stick to your guns and stay home? It is a lose-lose situation because the first will make them happy, but the second will build your willpower and confidence. People will want to date you that you must turn down because they will be a distraction.
You will miss parties, You will miss tons of events that you wish you could have been at. There will be days when it may even family does not understand what you are trying to accomplish. Success requires persistence, stubbornness, and focus on your goals.
Athletes Sacrifice Sanity
You have to be a bit insane to accomplish any great feature. The reason you have to sacrifice your sanity a bit is that your lifestyle will be so different.
There is a quote that goes “The mass of men leads lives of quiet desperation.”
We love the quote because of its truth. Seems like most people live lives that don’t even remotely make them happy. They hate their jobs, their marriage sucks, their children are out of control, they get treated like crap, and they hate it all. Deep down they are just looking for any escape to ease the pain.
The above is normal! We expect to divorce, failure, bad jobs and every other negative thing you can think of.
Anytime you want an abundant life. Whether it is one as a successful athlete or anything else, people will tell you that you’re crazy.
People will be upset deep down that you don’t want the same desperate life as them.
The only way to not give into everyone telling you to be normal is to lose your sanity a bit. You have to feel like everyone is so different from you and they just don’t do things your way. Most of all if you want to be in the 5% of people that are successful, you can’t think like the majority.
Did We Miss Any Athlete Sacrifices?
There are plenty of other sacrifices athletes make, can you name any more? Let us know and leave a comment here or on this @9INEPOINT Instagram Post.
