Complacency Kills
I like to target and inspire the under dog in most of my posts. My whole life I’ve always viewed myself as one, so it is truly me speaking from my heart. But today I want to ask you, how do you deal with success? Let’s assume you started from the bottom, but you are moving up, you’ve made some check marks on goals you were chasing for years. But now what? How do you deal with success? “Started from the bottom now we’re here!” - Drake. You know this song right? There’s a good chance that if you don’t even like hip hop you still have sung along to the words at some point. But what do they mean to you? Where is “here?”. Is it your end goal? There is no question Drake and his crew essentially did start from something like the bottom, but if you watch the business moves they make and pay attention to how they have expanded outside of the music industry, you’ll notice they are far from content. How can you keep your hunger and stay motivated when success is something that starts to build? What do you do?
This may be bad advice but I’ll tell you what I do. In order to stay hungry, to stay motivated, to keep my edge or the chip on my shoulder, I keep adapting my perspective. Was I happy when we won our title this past year as the fittest team in the world? You bet I was! But I constantly humble myself and give most of the credit to my TEAM, not me. This allows me to be grateful and not boastful. I also take a step back and remember there is still 1 other person who has as many affiliate cup titles as me, James Hobart, so there is tangible evidence that I’ve done nothing too exceptional by winning 3. When I made it to the CrossFit Games and qualified as an individual in 2015, I was pumped! But, all I could think about was that I didn’t win my regional, this spurred a long summer of training that made me determined to be the fittest in my regional at the CrossFit Games. After I made that goal happen I looked around and realized I finished 21st in the world, far from 10th and a whole world away from the podium, this didn’t just leave me hungry but starving for more.
When I signed my full ride scholarship to Weber State University to play football, I was very excited and pleased with “making it.” I would be the first in my family to go to college, let alone on a scholarship. But, again my view was that it wasn’t a big D1 school, it wasn’t Oregon, Oregon State, Utah, BYU, or Arizona, some of the first schools to contact and recruit me. There was a reason, they didn’t think I was good enough…starving again. My perspective on that scholarship went from pleased to almost angry. My expectations then went from contributing to the team to dominating everyone while I was there. I knew if I wanted to make my dreams happen to chase the NFL that I had to be the big fish in a small pond, that wouldn’t come easy.
As a business, FNX is doing well, we are serving many athletes and affiliates across the United States with our products and influencing, educating and inspiring people to train harder, smarter, be stronger and go longer, we are helping people rise up! But we are not content, we are hungry. When we can walk into any gym around the WORLD and have people not just taking our products but inspiring others in that community, then we will be getting somewhere. And even then the perspective will change to something greater, there is no ceiling on how far we can rise until we let someone put one on us.
This may speak to you today, and it may not. Complacency is the death of many. I write this specifically because when we can taste success, when we see an influx of money in our bank account (security or freedom), we can feel as though we have “arrived”. But the truth is that we are always either getting better or getting worse and there is no in between. This is truth and if you want to argue it you can, but I’d imagine your life's success will reflect the truth behind the statement. Some of you may say, “Adrian, you are too hard on yourself or you really have to enjoy your success more.” My response to you would be that I do enjoy success, but I enjoy building new rungs on the ladder more and taking another step. I have friends and family that love to tell me I’m doing a great job, and I thank them. In fact, a lot of what I do is to make them proud and happy, it truly fulfills me. But I love the process so much, that if the reward never came I’d still keep chasing and keep climbing. I hope you will do the same.
#keeprising