Monday, February 02, 2009

Steelers - It's not going to be pretty

Yes, the Steelers won the Super Bowl, but it's that comment from coach Mike Tomlin that really stood out to me.

One third of all Steelers victories this past season occurred in the final minutes of the game. When asked if they could just stop that - "Steeler football is 60 minutes," Tomlin said. "It's not going to be pretty."

We all want our path to victory to be golden, but often there's a lot of bumps and potholes along the way. It's not about how we got there, though, or how long it took. As long as our choices were ethical, moral & legal, it doesn't matter. All the struggles & pain vanish with the victory.

I think about this type of victory and consider the parallels. When I first began, I'd look upon the success of other authors & speakers and wonder how on earth did they do it. I've so much further to travel, but now when others ask me how I did it, I know the answer. I just kept beating against that brick wall until I got through! It wasn't pretty at times, but I made it through the wall. And it's not the struggles I remember anymore...

And if we continue to pursue new victories, we'll never even have time to dwell on past struggles!

9 comments:

Prill Boyle said...

I love this post! I, too, just kept beating against that brick wall until I got through.

Allyn Evans said...

Randy Pausch, the Carnegie Mellon computer science professor who died of pancreatic cancer last summer, had a similar idea. In his book titled "The Last Lecture," he told readers that "brick walls are there for a reason." The reason: "to show you how badly you want something.

There will always be obstacles and challenges. That's a given.

Morgan Mandel said...

So true. Brick walls can be broken if you chip at them.

Morgan Mandel
http://morganmandel.blogspot.com

Carolyn Howard-Johnson said...

One of the things I advise in The Frugal Book Promoter is that writers WRITE down their goals--or their wishes. The stuff they see other writers do that they'd like to do. If we don't do that, we may miss entirely that we've achieved something we wanted to. It just sneaks up on us. (-:

Best,
Carolyn Howard-Johnson
Author of the multi award-winning HowToDoItFrugally series of books for writers
www.howtodoitfrugally.com

Anonymous said...

Getting anywhere is hard work.

Anonymous said...

I love this post, too! Each hit means you're a little closer to success!

Anonymous said...

You KNOW you are meant to be a writer when watching the super Bowl has you drawing parallels to your writing career! LOL

Good post.

L. Diane Wolfe said...

Marvin, anymore I can't look at ANYTHING without thinking "books!"
Or writing, or promoting...

Rebecca said...

thank you so much Diane for being the first to follow my new blog. I haven't unveiled it to anyone yet. Just created it over the weekend. I once interviewed you during a virtual book tour and hope you have found many successes since then.