“The world ain’t all sunshine and rainbows. It’s a very mean and nasty place… and I don´t care how tough you are, it will beat you to your knees and keep you there permanently, if you let it. You, me or nobody, is gonna hit as hard as life. But ain’t about how hard you hit… It’s about how hard you can get hit, and keep moving forward… how much you can take, and keep moving forward. That´s how winning is done. Now, if you know what your worth, go out and get what your worth. But you gotta be willing to take the hits. And not pointing fingers saying: You ain´t what you wanna be because of him or her or anybody. Cowards do that and that ain´t you! You´re better than that”

With 2016 kicking off a few days ago, there was no doubt that there would be countless resolutions to be made, just like any and every other year. Some of those resolutions will be kept, most won’t.

Truth is, most people are lazy, scared, too self conscious or, a combination of. The common person is scared of what their peers might think, what society might think, what family might think. They might want to change but, they are too worried about what criticisms those changes might spark from others.

A person might want to change their physical appearance and get in better shape. One might want to start their own business or change careers. Maybe go back to school and chase that dream job but, fact is, most are too scared to try. They find any excuse along the way because, frankly, they are too concerned with the possibility of failure.

The truth of the matter is, EVERYONE who has ever tried to do anything noteworthy, has failed at least once, often they have failed multiple times but, the one thing they didn’t do was to let a failure here, or a setback there, derail them from eventually reaching their goal.

Nowhere can this be observed more often than in running. I doubt there are too many other endeavors where a person can fail more often than they succeed, yet, still chase their goals and dreams with such vigor. Running also exposes the types of personalities that are out there and shows an individuals true character.

You have those who go out, train their asses off, show up and crush races more often than not but, from time to time, they also tank hard. Recently, one of my longtime running friends trained her ass off, went to the starting line in great shape but, had an awful race (by her standards and expectations). But, rather than make up countless excuses, she simply shed a few tears, dusted herself off, and is now back on the horse training for the next race.

Then, you have those who are the exact opposite. They race and train for the recognition and the accolades. These types will all too often have a bad race and, rather than take any blame or point to areas they needed to improve, they just make up excuse after excuse to try and avoid the pressures of what others might think of them.

Point is, these are just running examples but, these type of personalities carry over into every other realm of life too. Many will walk over others to try and get to the top, while the most successful ones are smart enough to know that they can’t see the top, without standing on the shoulders of giants.

So, at the end of the day, you have to ask yourself, are you going to make your life or, allow life to make you?

As they say, “fortune favors the prepared” but, it also favors those who go out and get what they want, stopping for nothing. They don’t create excuses, they create solutions, even after having failed. The reason those types can succeed, even after failure, is because they can always go back and pinpoint the reason they failed, then fix that issue and move on, so as to avoid repeating the same failure. They don’t pass blame or point fingers, they find their own glitches and rewire them.

Learn from your mistakes, learn from failure, take constructive criticism as a way to correct your discrepancies, don’t be so sensitive, realize you aren’t perfect and, at all costs, KEEP MOVING FORWARD!!