Saturday, October 19, 2013

Motivation Week - Al Pacino "Heal or Crumble"

Warning: The video I've shared today contains some cursing (so does my blog) so, if you're not comfortable with a few curse words, I wouldn't suggest watching it (or reading my blog LOL).


As a movie-lover, I was bound to give you a motivational week post that came from a movie and I found the perfect one from Any Given Sunday, a 1999 film about a football team. Well, I suppose it's more complicated than just being about a football team, but it's mostly about a football team. It's a star-studded affair - Cameron Diaz, Al Pacino, Jamie Foxx, James Woods and Dennis Quad.

Most people call this the "Inch by Inch" speech and while I can see the relevance in doing so, I decided to focus on another important point made in the beginning of the speech:
Either we heal as a team or we're going to crumble.

Here's the thing, in life and in business, shit happens. You make bad decisions. You work with the wrong people. You chase the wrong thing. Nobody's perfect and anyone who tells you that they've gotten it 100% right from the beginning to end is either lying to you or they aren't making any decisions. I once heard it said "If you're not making any mistakes, it's because you're not making enough decisions." But, no matter the outcome of your choices, when things don't go well, you have the option to heal and move forward or crumble into pieces and stay there on the floor.

Lord knows I've had quite a few scenarios when I've been faced with such a decision - should I give up or should I keep going? Ultimately, my desire to be successful and my passion for what I do far outweighed any desire I remotely had about quitting.

Pacino goes on to say:

Life is a game of inches. The inches we need are everywhere around us. They're in every break of the game, every minute, every second. We claw with our fingernails for those inches because we know that when we add all those inches up, it's going to make the f*cking difference between WINNING and LOSING. Between LIVING and DYING!

In any fight, it's the guy who's willing to die who is going to win that inch.

Now, whattya gonna do?

So, that's it - that's all there is. You live your life and you run your business one inch at a time. You do the best you can with what you have and you press forward in spite of bad choices/mistakes or less than favorable situations.

Are you motivated yet?

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