Motivation is easy…

A friend of mine, Academy Director of Atlanta United Soccer Team, Matt Lawrey gave a talk titled: Three Challenges to Inspire the Atlanta United Academy. His second challenge hit me like a ton of bricks.

Don’t be motivated. Be committed. It is easy to be motivated. It is easy to be inspired and it is easy to walk out of this building and go home and say, “I’m going to work on what I do. I’m going to work on my finishing, I’m going to work on my touch. I”m going to get juggling.” But the ones who are the best are the ones who are committed.

There was a marathon runner in the 1960’s and 1970’s who won Gold Medal in Mexico City in 1968. He won Gold in Munich in 1972. And afterwards he went back home and he continued to do what he did which was train. Runners from all over the country started to flock to him and say, “How did you do this? How did you come up with this? How did you win Gold?” He said, “Oh come train with me at six AM tomorrow.” They said, “Oh great, not a problem, this is awesome!” They come and they train at six a.m. They run the first day and say it was not that bad. “This Gold medal looks great on me! This is fantastic!” Second day, six a.m. they show up. They run on the fourth day, fifth day, sixth day, second week and even third week, they show up. But, fifth month….no one was left because no one else was committed. They were motivated, they were inspired. They saw the Gold, they wanted it but they weren’t willing to put in the work to actually get it.

Be committed. It’s easy to be motivated. But that is finite. It’s easy to be inspired and go watch a youtube video and see Naymar juggling. It’s easy , but to be committed and to show up every day and to work harder than the guy next to you, that is commitment.