Work Ethic

A trait about myself that I find to be one of my strongest is my work ethic. When I set my mind on something, there is no stopping me. I make goals all the time and expect myself to reach every single one of them. I am extremely competitive and try to not let people out work me.

Trust me, I am really really competitive.

You come to the gym with me and I will try and match the weight you put on (to a reasonable extent), tell me you are going to apply for the same job/internship as me and now I’ve found my motivation. I let someone give me a reason to push myself even harder.

I’m writing this as my schedule is about to ramp up. Baseball season for NYU starts Thursday which means my scouting internship will kick into gear. I’ve been stressing over the schedule, when I’ll be able to squeeze in working out, when I’ll be able to work shifts at work, and also balancing that with school work and outside baseball stuff I’m doing.

It’s important to keep pushing yourself. I hit a low point two days ago where my motivation was gone, I was battling with my own mind and driving myself insane.

However, I’m back on track.

I decided I’m going to start making weekly goal lists. Being the competitive person I am, if I set expectations for myself for the week, I’m going to meet them. I’m going to want to meet them. I’m going to put everything I’ve got into making sure I can check every single thing off of that list. It’s who I am.

That’s about me though. I think it’s important for everybody to find a way to get themselves going. I’ve found my way for a long time which is why I’ve been able to keep my work ethic to a fairly high level.

Goal setting is so big.

Find what you see yourself doing. Do you see yourself getting an internship over the summer? What kind? Picture yourself in that setting. Now? Go get it, set time up to apply, search what you need to do to be qualified, discover the right path and how to reach that goal. Think about how happy you will be when you reach that goal.

Talk to me about my goals. I vision myself living in Madison Square Park in a nice apartment with my pet corgi working in baseball, whether it be for the Yankees, Mets, MLB, MLBAM, Cyclones, whatever. I’m working so hard day and night towards achieving that because that’s what will make me happy and proud of myself. The more I slack off, the more frustrated I get with myself, the more I know that I should have been doing something more productive and that it would contribute towards my future goals.

It has to be towards something that is going to make you happy. In my opinion though…

Don’t set a goal that strives only towards money.

Money can only get you so much. Yea would you be happy running a garbage company with the worst co workers and all you do is sit in a stench filled cubicle sitting on your computer all day? “Oh but it’s ok, I’m making six figures!”

That’s not going to make you happy, right?

I’d much rather be making a sustainable amount of money and going and spending the majority of my days doing something that I love to do.

I kind of went off on a tangent there but that’s my point. Set goals for yourself, vision where you want to be, discover how to get there.

Those who compete with me, I vision myself beating you and pushing myself to my very limit.

What’s just as important as goal setting when it comes to work ethic is positivity.

You can’t get motivated to do your work and reach your goals if you aren’t positive you can achieve them. You have to believe in yourself every step of the way and you CANNOT QUIT! Do not quit, ever. Quitting is the worst thing you can possibly do for yourself in my opinion. Unless you’ll be mentally better off letting a certain task go or you found your love down a different path, do not quit. Be positive you can make it through. Push through every hurdle that comes your way because you’ll be able to look back and realize that it wasn’t so bad, and you’re now a better person because you got through it.

There’s no use in being scared either. Try things, ask questions, push yourself. There are so many cheesy lines I can say when it comes to work ethic but they are all true. It’s about going for what you desire, and you have to really want it. One of my favorite lines from Eric Thomas is “When you want to succeed, as bad as you want to breathe, then you’ll be successful.” I highly recommend watching his “How bad do you want it?” speech on Youtube.

If you don’t want that promotion, if you don’t want that career, if you don’t want to learn how to do this, if you don’t want that girl or guy you’re interested in, WHATEVER IT MAY BE, bad enough, then you simply won’t work hard enough towards it. If you find yourself constantly trying to find motivation to do work, you don’t want it bad enough. I’m not saying you need to change your goal, you just have to look at it from a different perspective. Why don’t you want it bad enough? What’s driving you away? Are you scared? Or you thinking you can’t do it so what’s the point?

You have to want it. Tell yourself you want it. I sound so corny right now but I don’t care. The longer you slack off, the longer you procrastinate, the longer you push off what you want, you’ll find yourself in a bad place in no time.

Set alarms to set goals for the week, put sticky notes up of the things you have to do, put up pictures of your vision and goals. Make it stick out to you, to give yourself a reminder of why you are doing all of this work and why you might put yourself through all this stress.

You’re doing all of this to make yourself happy. Remember that, you should be happy. Always go for the things you love, the things that put a smile on your face, the things that get you excited no matter what it is. Surround yourself with positivity. That’s your motivation. You have to internally motivate yourself and the best way to do that is to connect to what you are passionate about.

I’ve got a lot on my mind right now and a lot of work coming up but I know it’ll be worth it, especially when the work involves the thing that I love.

Keep pushing forward, don’t quit, be happy. That’s all I can say.

“So you gotta fire up, you gotta let go, you’ll never be loved ti’ll you’ve made your own, you gotta face up, you gotta get yours, you never know the top ti’ll you get too low.”- I’m So Sorry, Imagine Dragons