Looking back through the years, its well beyond doubt that real success is a direct product of two key factors, hard work and time. I use the term real success because there are certainly instances where the system can be cheated; however, I'm starting to learn you cannot cheat it forever. Now, I think if you look a little deeper into the equation, there are key factors that affect effort, such as motivation and accessibility. Time however, in my eyes, is a constant; it never stops or slows down, thus the only controllable piece to the puzzle is effort. The difference between good and great is recognizing that time is far less important than the quality of work done throughout.

There will always be those who baffle the world by pulling off amazing feats without really doing their homework, but those are not the Michael Jordans, Muhammad Alis, or the Lance Armstrongs; they are the underdogs who pull off upsets from time to time and when they are gone, so is their name. It seems that all great athletes in history that have been consistently dominate over a respectable amount of time share one simple characteristic, quality of effort; it’s the simple phrase you’ve heard in sports since you were a little kid, “you get out what you put in.” I can remember telling people what I did for training when I was younger and they either didn’t believe me or they thought I was crazy, which is exactly what I think when I read through Jordan’s, Ali’s, or Armstrong’s training regimens. I’m not saying I’m even comparable to those athletes, however, I refuse to believe that it’s coincidence. The truth is that it’s been a very long time since I’ve been able to wow anyone with the quality of my training and unfortunately, I’ve only just recently decided that it’s no longer acceptable after consistent lack of capable performance.

“I just need time,” is a phrase that I’ve been abusing to the point that I started actually believing it and it’s undoubtedly caused lack of necessary effort in training. I didn’t want to admit it, so I kept making excuses and assuring myself that I would fix it later; I didn’t realize that time was a factor I couldn’t even control. I was able to finally comprehend this concept by putting myself in the same situation repetitively and expecting a different outcome without changing the key factor; the outcome stayed the same. I’ve been traveling along the time path to insanity for far too long and I now find myself at the crossroads. I think it’s time to get off the path filled with excuses and failures and back on the correct one filled with peace of mind and success; I'll take the next right turn onto the path labeled hard work.