25that two-by-four, But if I put that same two-by-four 10
stories high between two buildings only a few would
make it, because the focus would be on falling. Focus is
everything. The team that is more focused today is the
team that will win this game.”
Johnson told his team not to be distracted by the
crowd, the media, or the possibility of losing, but to fo-
cus on each play of the game itself just as if it were a
good practice session.
The Cowboys won the game 52-17.
There’s a point to that story that goes way beyond
football. Most of us tend to lose our focus in life because
we’re perpetually worried about so many negative pos-
sibilities. Rather than focusing on the two-by-four, we
worry about all the ramifications of falling. Rather than
focusing on our goals, we are distracted by our worries
and fears.
But when you focus on what you want, it will come
into your life. When you focus on being a happy and mo-
tivated person, that is who you will be.
5. Learn to sweat in peace
The harder you are on yourself, the easier life is on
you. Or, as they say in the Navy Seals, the more you
sweat in peacetime, the less you bleed in war.
My childhood friend Rett Nichols was the first to
show me this principle in action. When we were play-
ing Little League baseball, we were always troubled by
how fast the pitchers threw the ball. We were in an
especially good league, and the overgrown opposing
pitchers, whose birth certificates we were always de-
manding to see, fired the ball in to us at alarming speeds
during the games.
Learn to sweat in peace