Discipline and the other 11 iMentor apostles
Discipline
The cornerstone of everything. Motivation comes in waves, your attention WILL be diverted, priorities in your life will continually shift. The only thing that will keep you consistent is your determination to be disciplined. Eluid Kipchoge said it best when he said “Only the disciplined ones are free in life, if you aren’t disciplined you are a slave to your moods. You are a slave to your passions.”
Patience
What comes easy won’t last. What lasts won’t come easy. Its that simple.
Delayed gratification
Ignoring current pleasures for bigger rewards to come. Give up the good if you want the great.
Be honest with yourself
It’s better to admit you walked through the wrong door than spend your life in the wrong room.
Find mentors
The more you learn and the more you know, the more you will discover how little you actually know. How little anybody knows for that matter (with the exception of astrophysicists, those folks know A LOT). There’s a power in knowing that you do not know it all - not even close. Your opinion and your view is just that, yours. It’s not necessarily right. Sometimes it may not even be true. Its valid, its important - but so is everybody else’s. Find mentors to broaden and challenge your views.
Grit - you need to have it.
Roger Federer explains Grit flawlessly (of course he does). He said “people would say my play was effortless, they meant it as a compliment but it used to frustrate me. The truth is, I had to work very hard to make it look easy. Its not about having a gift, its about having grit.”
Luck
Never underestimate the role luck plays in any and every success that you have. You are not better than anyone else. You just had that magic combination of either talent/hardwork/grit/ambition + a whole bucket load of luck.
Listen
You were given two ears, two eyes and one mouth. Use them proportionately.
Believe in yourself
Emma Watson gave a UN goodwill ambassador speech for Women a few years back and I will never forget one of her closing lines:
“If not you, who? If not now, when?”
Don’t be an asshole.
Be full of yourself.
Matthew Mc Conaughey once challenged this insult of being “full of oneself” with “who else am I supposed to be full of?” When I was 14 or 15 years old this was for sure the WORST insult you could ever get. You may as well just head off to Inishbofin for yourself and become a recluse if you were deemed “full of yourself”. 20 years later, I can proudly say, I am most definitely and completely full of myself. And here’s the ironic twist about being full of yourself - the more full of yourself you are, the more you have to give to others.
Be consistent.
Do not give up. Kobe Bryant was known to consistently chase perfection and excellence. “I knew I would probably never catch it but just the fact that I was willing to chase it I would defeat my opponents. Most of my opponents will never chase something that didn’t have any guarantees attached to it”. Chase it down friends, consistently.