Success

This post brings me back to high school sports. Some of you, who may have actually played high school sports with me, may remember the theme: “Know when to turn it on”. The basis of this theme is good – it basically states you should always recognize when it’s time to perform at the highest level (e.g. for competitions). Frequently this “sound bytable” fragment of motivational speech would be tossed around during practice time when people were not performing well. It’s as if to say “It’s ok if we fool around now, because we know when to ‘turn it on’.” At first I was tacitly compliant with this mentality, but before long I realized that while some people could ‘flick a switch’ and perform at a high level, others could not (important to note, I was a member of the latter cohort). Several years later I came to my own conclusion. The secret to success isn’t knowing when to turn it on, but rather it’s learning to never turn it off.