Fit Focus: McGeeney shows the only thing you should fear is not giving your best

Having watched Armagh lift the Sam Maguire trophy last week it helped me draw a lot of similar thoughts to mind for being successful in any part of life.

The team suffered setback after setback over the past number of years. Losing out on big days through penalty shoot-outs. They had been on a streak of not losing a game in normal time for over 20 games and still having no medal or trophy to show for their efforts.

Many people questioned them, they questioned their ability, they questioned their mental strength and their ability to get over the line on big days when it really matters.

However, that did not stop them, they stuck to the process and believed in themselves and in what they were doing and believed that they would one day reap the reward for all their efforts.

A huge amount of credit has to go to their manager Kieran McGeeney for the way he led this group of players and clearly shows his mental strength and his ability to be able to paint a picture of success for these players that makes them willing to sacrifice everything to achieve the ultimate goal.

However, at the end of the day no matter how good a picture he painted the players still had to make the choice on whether to commit to this journey, they make the biggest sacrifices, they are the ones who cross the white line.

They are the ones who spend their sweat and tears and on some occasions blood to achieve their ultimate goals.

They are the ones who have to come back time after time after losing those big games and get back to the training ground week after week in order to improve so that ultimately, they will be successful.

His speech after the game summed it up perfectly. In this speech, he said that you should never fear losing because you are going to have more bad days than good days along the way.

The only thing you should fear is not giving your best, not sticking with something through until the end and you should fear giving up.

It is no different in any other aspect of your life and sport is just a mirror of life in many ways. 

You have to be willing to take the setbacks for what they are, they are just learnings along the journey, you have to stay true to your goals and ambitions, you have to have unwavering and consistently committed to achieving whatever goal you have set for yourself.

If you are unwilling to do the hard work in the background when nobody is watching, if you are too afraid of losing to start the journey, if you are not strong enough to pull your socks back up after a setback then you will never achieve anything worthwhile.

Nobody else is going to do it for you, nobody is going to come and turn the TV off and tell you it’s time to go to bed. Nobody is coming to push you. Nobody is going to come and tell you to get out the door and exercise. Nobody is coming to tell you that you need to eat these foods.

It is all up to you; you are always going to have to push yourself. You are always going to need to parent yourself. It is your job to make yourself do the stuff you don’t want to do so you can be everything that you are supposed to be.

Now the choice is yours, is you goal worthy of your blood, sweat and tears? Are you willing to make the sacrifices necessary to achieve your goal? Have you painted a clear enough picture of your goal for yourself?

Winning is hard but so is losing. You have to choose which hard you want in life.