Effort and Results are Two Different Things.

There’s a man around the same age as me that works out at the gym the same hours I do (early a.m.). He hits every machine in the gym twice, he sweats non-stop, he drinks his water, he does his cardio, his ab work, he’s friendly, and extremely dedicated. The problem is that he does pretty much everything wrong. Most mornings I try to avoid watching him for fear of laughing at him or for fear that will eventually kill himself. I’ve tried to offer a little advice but he just shrugs it off.

Effort and Results are Two Different Things.

While I was attending community college trying to figure out what I wanted to be when I grow up, I met a cat named Gary. Gary was a math and engineering major but dropped out because he wanted to follow in his father’s footsteps to be a car mechanic. Now this guy absolutely loved cars. Give him 10 minutes with your car and he could point out all the negatives and positives. He had subscriptions to every car magazine on the planet and his backyard was full of “projects.” In fact he was the guy that you take to the auto-parts store because he usually knew more than the guys that worked there. The problem was that Gary was terrible with his hands and had no coordination.

Though Gary could tell you how to install a muffler, brakes, transmission, and drop an engine- him actually doing it was not a pretty sight. He constantly tripped over his tool box, used the wrong tools, and just took too long. It was like his hands could not understand what his brain was telling them to do! I love the guy to death and he was extremely knowledgeable but I always feared that he was wasting that knowledge chasing something he was not cut out to do. I tried to hint around about him returning to school but he was so passionate about opening his “garage.”

Effort and results are two different things.

I’m not throwing these two individuals under the spotlight to make a mockery of them. I just wanted to use them as an example that just because you’re “working hard” doesn’t mean you’re actually working towards your goals. There comes a point where you just have to examine your goals and say to yourself; “Am I good at this?” “Will I ever be good at this?” and “What will it take to get great at this?”

I always advocate living your life with PASSION! But that passion can’t be blind. If you keep making the same mistakes, if you keep coming across the same bumps in the road – there comes a time in which you have to make sure you’re on the “right road.” If not, you’ll keep wasting good effort on dreams unfulfilled. And when dreams go unfulfilled for long periods of time – it’s usually hard to figure out "why" when you get to looking back on things.

Don’t be a prisoner of hope. Don’t let blind passion shield you from the most important thing.

Results.

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