“I just keep focused on the next day and what we gotta do to win.” Aaron Judge
Success eats itself all too often.
The hungry fighter, craving and sacrificing every day for years gets a shot at the Champ and takes them down. Then come the media appearances, and endorsements, the hangers on telling them how great they are and they lose the edge, unable to maintain the all-consuming desire that drove them to win and as such they lose. Their confidence now broken, they may get another shot but it is even more difficult to climb back to the top of the mountain and with the big paychecks and other opportunities they decide to climb down the mountain instead of struggling for the pinnacle again.
The salesperson that makes fifty calls a day as a rookie, that works late and gets in the office early and asks everyone for referrals and is constantly uncomfortable so is willing to risk embarrassment starts to succeed. They stop practicing their language daily, stop doing the little things to get a jump on their competition. They stop studying because they are enjoying what they have. Those things that worked well they stop doing because it hurts and they are tired. They get some luck and get a little fat and happy, showing up a little later and leaving a little earlier and start selling existing clients instead of prospecting for new opportunities. The sales still come for a while but the reserves start to be drained, and then one day their sales pipeline is empty and there are few opportunities to refill it because the relationships weren’t nurtured and the skills faded.
The perfect spouse stops investing time to take care of themselves and showing up with their best for their partner. Maybe kids take a ton of time and work piles up and they no longer do the little things for each other like bringing coffee in the morning or picking up the dishes or doing a regular date or just sitting and talking regularly. They are too busy with the image of happiness to actually be happy. The lack of consistent investment of effort and attention enables entropy to creep in and suddenly after two decades of deferring the maintenance of the marriage the divorce is filed.
We let our success go to our head and heart and waistline. We stop pushing to improve, no longer focus on maximizing the moment, and we start to subtly decline. We erode our efforts, and we no longer are our best nor do the work to be so. The success plants its own seeds of failure, comfort slowly killing the dream and the discipline to stay successful.
Every day. Every day we must focus on being and becoming excellent, or improving in some way each day. Struggling even when we don’t have to so as to maintain the mentality of the challenger climbing towards the next mountaintop even if we are standing on top of the current peak. Because the fall is inevitable without attention and effort.
Focus on what you have to do to win, even when you are winning.