“Dead butts, gotta get up, gotta get up before they go broke”
This is the “song” that I woke up to every morning throughout my childhood. My dad would wake my sister Megan and I up every day by walking into our rooms singing this song. He would then proceed to recite other phrases such as, “If you have ten hours to cut down a tree, you better spend nine hours sharpening your saw.” My personal favorite, that I sometimes use against members of my family is, “Prior planning prevents poor performance.”
I’m not joking when I say this is how our family started every morning. Though Megan and I would often roll our eyes at the attempts of my dad to motivate us for the day ahead, one particular phrase he would say quite often has ended up playing a role in my everyday life.
“Winners make it happen, losers let it happen.”
It’s seems so simple. You probably read this phrase and think, “Well, DUH!” But what if you stop and think about all the times you might have let life happen to you instead of doing something?
Myself, along with many other college students, will probably respond “I’m not sure” to the question,“What do you want to do when you graduate?” Although it’s totally fine to not know what you want to do with your life at 21 years old, I notice many college students choose to do nothing at all. Looking at the future is difficult. There are so many unknowns, the chance of failure is always present and it’s just plain scary.
Here’s the thing though. What really matters is that you just do something. No one ever made a decision because they were 100% sure it was the perfect choice. Whether it involves getting a job, starting a business or having a tough conversation, those who have found success will attribute it to the fact that they just started somewhere. Waiting around for life to happen to you is never going to make you a winner.
The same goes for instances where you seek change. Stop waiting for someone else to be the leader. Sitting around and complaining about how everyone is incapable and playing the “he said she said” game doesn’t earn results. Making it happen is all about taking initiative to make one small change, and then another.
So after 21 years of these motivational phrases being branded into my life, I’m really thinking my dad is on to something. Maybe he should become a motivational speaker or counselor or something. He probably doesn’t want me to expose him though, so I’ll stop sharing for now.
