R U N Control
All right, so here we are again—another beautiful day. I have a quote for you that I kind of really like. I think everybody knows by now that not only am I a pithy quote guy, but I am often talking to myself. I’m speaking from experience. I’m speaking from a place where sometimes I’m reminding myself of lessons I’ve learned. Through my multiple years and decades on this planet, I’ve encountered pitfalls, made mistakes, and had to climb back out. I’ve had to go back and fix things that prevented me from achieving certain goals. I share these experiences to help you avoid some of the same mistakes.
This quote says, “Control your laziness, and you’ll understand how much success you’ve been avoiding.” I like the way that’s phrased because it’s not about whether or not you can be successful or will be successful. It’s more about realizing that if you can control how lazy you are, you’ll start seeing how much success you have avoided.
“Control your laziness, and you’ll understand how much success you’ve been avoiding.”
In my life, I’ve had moments of laziness. I’ve looked back and realized that months—or even years—had gone by, and I had to ask myself, “What if I had done this, that, or the other?” I talk about reading books all the time—just 10 pages a day. If you read 10 pages a day, you can easily finish 12 or 13 books a year. The other day, I read a 280-page book in three days. But that’s not me bragging; it’s me realizing that I had fallen out of my routine. I hadn’t read a book in a few months. I had gotten lazy. Now, I’m getting back into it and stepping away from the laziness that easily creeps in.
We can all find ourselves wanting to binge-watch TV, getting caught in a cycle of sameness and drudgery, forming habits that aren’t necessarily good for us. The way out of that is simple: control your laziness. Put systems in place to keep yourself accountable. Go to the gym and make sure a friend is going with you so you can’t skip gym day. You don’t want to skip leg day!
Do things that help you control your laziness.
Read 10 pages a day. It’s something I’ve started doing with my boys. I sit them down every day and have them read a chapter or two, depending on the book. My son David is reading a book that’s about 109 pages long. He reads a few chapters each day and finishes it in four or five days. By the end of the week, he’s read a book. Sometimes even more. Because it’s a daily habit, it builds his reading skills, vocabulary, and comprehension. The same thing with Jonathan—he reads a chapter a day from a John Grisham book. We laugh at the story, he learns new words, and he grows. I’m setting in motion a habit that keeps him from being lazy when it comes to expanding his mind.
I have to do the same for myself. When we’re young, if we build these habits, we can carry them into adulthood. But if we slip up, even for a few weeks, negative habits start forming. Skipping leg day turns into skipping back day, then bicep day, then chest day. Before you know it, months have passed, and you haven’t been to the gym. You haven’t read a book in a week, a month, a year. No pages. And in doing so, you’ve slowed your success down. You’ve put a dam in the stream of knowledge in your life, building a reservoir without an outflow.
Without that flow of knowledge, you have nothing to give to others. You become stagnant. That’s not what we want.
Control your laziness and find out how much success you might have been avoiding. I don’t want this to feel like a message that brings you down. If this resonates with you like it does with me, maybe you need to shake yourself up a bit. Maybe it’s time to say, “I’m going to change a few habits.” Go to the gym. Start reading. Take a class. Spend time with friends. Turn off the television. Put away the PlayStation for a while. Do something that enhances your mind and focus—something that makes you a better person, more successful tomorrow than you were today.
For the rest of this month and the rest of this year, be valuable. Nothing less will do. You can do it, you can control your laziness. You have the power. Make it happen.
God bless you. See you next week.
