Make a million dollars?

Become well known?

Become an Icon?

Make friends?

Be the boss?

Own your own business?

Give back?

Help your community?

Make money and help at the same time?

Become a Rockstar CEO

Here is the thing, it doesn’t matter what your motives are, as long as you are honest with yourself, and most importantly, the people you are trying to connect with. If you are who you say you are, and you prove that over and over again, people will begin to watch, listen, and even support you. Now, this may not happen over night, it may take months or years to build the trust you need in order to become what you want, but in the end it is worth it.

When you finally have the supporters/fans/followers/customers you want, you will need to continue to deliver on all the promises you made, and you will need to continue to be as honest and open as you were in the beginning. Why? because, what may take 5 years to build, could all be brought down with one deceptive, or not perfectly honest move.

Work hard, be honest, have fun, and pursue your dreams.

When people say they can’t do something, it is almost guaranteed they simply don’t want to do it. They are physically capable, they are simply not willing.

If I asked you to be a vegetarian for a year, you would say I can’t go without meat for a whole year. I would then ask,

“How do you know, have you tried it?”

You probably have not, you just are not willing to do it. If I ask you to run 10 400 meter sprints, you would say, “I can’t”.

I would say “Why not?”

I didn’t say you had to run them all under a certain time, and I didn’t even say you had to be done in an hour, but because you are not willing to push yourself, test yourself, find out what you are really made of, the easy answer is “I Can’t”.

The things you don’t want to do are almost certainly the things that will make you better, help you lose weight, live longer, sleep better, get stronger, and so on.

The things you can’t do are things you have worked hard to do, but just seem to come up a little short, but you tried, and hopefully you still are.

For example, I worked my butt off when I played to run faster, throw harder, and hit for a higher average. I ran sprints on top of sprints, then I ran stairs. I worked out hard, played long toss, took a million swings, and even skipped parties in which I knew my friends would be at, because I had things I had to work on, because I truly wanted to know what I could and couldn’t do.

After all that my list of “I can’t” is this:

I can’t throw 91
I can’t run a 6.6 sixty
I can’t dunk a basketball two handed (or at all anymore)
There are more, but I don’t want to continue writing all of them, I could, I just choose not to.

What is it that you cannot truly do, and what is it that you do not want to put the work in to achieve. Understanding the difference will help you understand what it is that you actually want to do with your life.

When you are working hard, running, lifting, swinging, taking ground ball, working on your blocking, or throwing a flat ground bull pen, the questions are who are you trying to impress and where is your drive coming from?

The answers to those questions should be yourself and within.  If you are doing extra work to get praise from someone else, for example a coach, teammate, or scout you are doing the work for the wrong reason and setting yourself up for disappointment.  Hard work is a trait and it will stick with you forever in anything you do as long as the work is being done for to get internal praise because the outside praise and fanfare will one day be gone, but there will still be things to work on for the rest of your life. 

Being a good human being is something that needs to be worked on everyday of your life whether you are a super star athlete or a 9-5 marketing manager.  It is of the utmost importance to practice doing things for the right reasons because your actions off the field and to the people you come in contact with will make impressions that go far beyond your athletic prowess.  Give yourself a little test.  When you hold the door open for someone to walk through and the do not say thank you, do you get mad?  If so you are doing it for the wrong reason, you should hold the door open because you want to help someone not because you want to be thanked for helping someone.  Now think about this, are you the guy who lifts early in the morning to get it out of the way and start your day or are you the guy who lifts when there is an audience so they can see how strong you are and tell you how great you are?  This matters because your  intentions are important.  Your intentions should be to do whatever you can in order to get better so you can help the team.  If you are doing the right things for the right reasons people will notice because it will show up on the field, but if you are doing things just for show then chances are that will also show up on the field. 

Your drive needs to come from within.  I say this all the time and I will keep saying it until it is not true.  You should be able to push yourself to be great and you only need the praise of the person looking back at you while you are brushing your teeth at night.  That praise is what matters because he will not lie to you and you cannot lie to him.  If the person in the mirror is content with your work ethic then chances are you are doing something right and you are doing them for the right reasons.  So keep working hard and playing for the love of the game.