Remember that game last Sunday night? Totally a rhetorical question, by the way. You know, the one with Tom Brady and the Patriots making that stupid comeback, down 28-3 with 10 minutes left in the game, scoring 31 unanswered points to win the title, yada yada yada.
That was lit.
Even the chicks who couldn’t give a lick about football (aside from the fact Brady was playing) knew the details. The score, the comeback, and how Brady got his fifth Super Bowl win. Every sports broadcaster fondled his balls. Every regular Joe (me and you) fondled a bunch of hate. Why? Because we’re conditioned to never like constant winners in life. Deal with it.
As cool as the win was to watch from a sports perspective, it’s easy to question just how calm, cool, and collected the Patriots ended up in order to pull off the amazing comeback win. When you’re down something like two touchdowns, a field goal, and two 2-point conversions, the word “impossible” comes knocking and shouting.
This Super Bowl Comeback is What Life is About
Only veteran players like Tom Brady understand what’s at stake besides their marriage. They know to slow it down and not get overwhelmed. They know to take it a step at a time. I mean, you’re down 25 points with minimal time left. To most people, this means curling up in a ball and crying. The only other option is to give up and play the rest of the game with a defeated attitude. Yeah, you’re gonna be that guy.
Enter Brady. He understands something most people spend their whole life running around. There’s a simple formula that goes something like this: you need a play with a completion. Then you need a play with positive yards. Then you need a first down. Then you need a touchdown. Then you repeat it again. And again. And guess what, again. Get where this is going? One thing at a time. Let’s face it, homeboy isn’t paid millions a year to throw his hands up in the championship game. He’s got an ego, he’s got a legacy, and he sure wants that fifth ring.
So let’s take a moment and walk away from the game example. What do most people do when they run into something similar in life? A situation where they see some end result they want, see where they currently stand, and then faster than you can swipe left on a dating app, decide it’s not worth it? They freak out, and never figure out what to do in the middle or how to get there.
Don’t be that guy/girl.
Yeah, that’s right. You see a beginning, you see an end, and you have no idea what the middle is. Unfortunately, the middle is where life happens.
What’s this mean for you?
First off, slow it down boss.
Soak in life lesson #343: success is built on discipline, and the ability to take small steps. You will never leap from nothing to something like a get-rich-quick scheme or a winning lottery ticket. That isn’t how success is wired. It takes patience; years of dedication even. And unfortunately, we aren’t even guaranteed the kind of success we envision, or get everything we want. But if you undertake it knowing it’s a risk, and have the mental attitude that hard work will get you somewhere and will get you something, you really can’t go wrong. If you can master the discipline required to do things not always when you want to do them but because you know you need to, you’re taking steps in a positive direction.
Sure, we saw the result of this discipline within 10 minutes, but that’s because it’s a football game. Real life takes much longer, but is pretty much guaranteed to give you the same result in some capacity. If you apply the same mental discipline and push forward with small steps, not big ones, it means just that; you’re moving forward.
