Rainbows and Kittens!
"You're okay. Just suck it up."
I must have heard that a thousand times growing up in small-town Texas. Fall down, rip the skin off my knee and that's what I'd hear. Get hurt playing football and I'd hear it again from the coach: Get up. You're okay. Suck it up.
Hurt happens. Not much you can do. You just grind it out and wait for the pain to subside. Then you clean yourself up and get back on the bike or back into the game.
Just suck it up, kid. You're embarrassing yourself. And girls are watching.
Not many folks seem to know the "suck it up" rule. Take dieting for example. There are going to be suck-it-up moments. There's a food in front of you that you can't eat if you want to meet your goals. There's going to be hunger when it's not time to eat yet. There are going to be cravings, at least in the beginning. That's supposed to happen. It's a diet. If it were easy, 63% of Americans wouldn't be fat.
The problem is, people can't seem to suck it up these days.
Maybe it's that entitlement mentality that's so prevalent today. You know, the world must be perfect, it must revolve around me, and I should be able to get anything I want without really working for it or making any sacrifices.
Well, princess, I guess I missed that memo about life being fair and easy. Or maybe I'm just a cold-hearted tyrant because when I was a kid they required us to actually win before we got a trophy. Yep, it was a cruel, cruel world back in the day.
(On a related note, you kids get off my lawn! And get a haircut!)
The study of high achievers teaches us a lot about this. We know that the most successful people, the real game-changers, seldom had the world handed to them on a silver platter. They struggled. They failed, learned from that failure, and moved on. They fell down a lot.
The expectation of those "suck it up" moments can increase your odds of meeting your goals. Going into a new diet or training program knowing that it's not going to be all sunshine and kittens can steel your will.
And when you hit those rough patches -- and you will hit those rough patches -- you'll suck it up and get right back into the game.
The rainbows and kittens come later.
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