Reach Higher

As I begin blogging again, I found inspiration for this blog’s topic from Michigan State University’s football team.  The team’s motto for the 2015 season is ‘Reach Higher’.  The statement very easily lends itself to a visceral interpretation of doing better and going further.  A motto that is fitting for a team that over the years has had increasingly great success in its regular seasons, bowl game appearances, and is sitting at the cusp of yet another banner year this year.  Without bragging about a team that I’m very proud of from my alma mater, let’s look into why this is a motto that is extremely pertinent to all of us whether you love or loathe football.

Let’s start with a simple experiment for illustrative purposes.  This will cause you to leave the screen you’re reading this on, so please come back to finish.  Don’t leave me behind in awe of the results.  Ready?  Here is the first instruction: stand against a wall and reach as high as you can.  Make sure that when you do this, you have a way to mark how high you were able to reach.  Return to a resting position, and come back to the screen for the second set of instructions.  Part 2: Do the exact same thing again, and you will probably be surprised that you can reach higher the second time.  Interesting right?

This type of phenomenon happens to us in our personal and professional lives quite often.  We work hard and give 100% of our effort to achieve a goal that we’ve been working towards.  The goal is attainable, but really expends a lot of energy as we’ve tried as hard as we can to accomplish it.  There’s a lot of pride that comes with reaching it, but we must remember not to get lost in the celebration.  Instead, if we focused our energy, concentrated and kept on pushing just a little harder we would be reaching higher and could achieve even more than we thought we could.

The biggest trap that we can fall into is being mesmerized by our initial success.  The intoxicating joy of achievement can easily lull us into a safe place of satisfaction.  Satisfaction is the worst enemy you can have when greatness in your personal or professional life is what you want.  Satisfaction means we’re too comfortable and settling for mediocrity.  The reality is, no one great was ever mediocre, and they were always pushing for the next goal to achieve, the next precipice to climb, the next business venture to embark on, and on and on.

Just when we thought we couldn’t get any better we aim to push a little more and reach higher and we can get an even better result.  Michigan State’s football team is illustrating their motto right now and we are watching it unfold before us.  Their head coach Mark Dantonio in his job acceptance press conference stated “My vision here is to win championships.  That’s my vision.”  He’s held true to this vision winning Bowl Games, Big Ten Division Championships, and Big Ten League Championships.  The success, and rate at which the program has achieved it, could be dizzying and very easy to be comfortable with.  But instead of being satisfied with their success, this year they are reaching higher and aiming for a National Championship.

This is the type of mindset that we need to carry with us.  It’s a hunger to keep achieving, to keep reaching higher just when we thought we reached high enough.

I’ve already proved to you that you can do it physically through the experiment that we started with.  So why not prove it to yourself through your accomplishments to reach the greatness that you desire and push a little further to surprise yourself with even more success.