“The secret to winning the game is staying in the game long enough to win the game.”
-Dr. Glenn Livingston

I came across this quote somewhere the other day, and liked it so much I had to write it down.

I liked it so much because it is so true.

With life, and achieving anything in it, you need to take a long term perspective. A year…years…a decade…multiple decades.

Something I’ve heard, and know to be true from personal experience, is that humans tend to overestimate what they can accomplish in a year, but underestimate what they can do in three years. 

(A lot of people tend to set yearly goals, but how many set three year goals? I wonder if that has anything to do with it.)

The fact is that most people quit too early. And in some cases too early may be after three or five years!

I’ve seen this happen in my fitness life. I was weak starting out. It pissed me off to see people that didn’t workout able to do things I had to bust my ass for six months to accomplish. But I continued working out. They didn’t.

I look back ten years and I’m amazed at all I’ve done. Holy shit! I am actually quite strong and do some amazing things. When did that happen? There was no magical flip of the switch, just consistency over a long time frame. 

I have made just about every mistake you could possibly make when it comes to business. I cringe to think about some of what occurred in my early days…or even just last year. But the one mistake I did not make, the one that made all the difference, was that I kept going.

I’ve stayed in the business game almost a decade now, and it’s really starting to pay off. 

It’s kind of aggravating thinking “Why did it take so long?” Well, I had a whole lot to learn over that time.

As long as you keep going, and you learn along the way, in the end you will be successful.

As coaching legend Vince Lombardi once stated after a loss, “We didn’t lose the game; we just ran out of time.”

In sports you have a finite time to win. While the time may vary, that’s part of the rules in pretty much every single sport there is.

In life, there is also a time limit…but this is far, far, far longer than any sport.

The more you can wrap your head around being persistent, being patient, and thinking for the long-term, the better off you’ll be no matter the endeavor.