First you have to be uncomfortable.
Nobody ever got better by being satisfied. In fact, being satisfied makes it more difficult to improve yourself. Look at the disparity between the (perceived) work effort of professional and collegiate athletes. You hear time and time again that the college guys want it more, and that is because they haven’t cashed that fat Tom Brady paycheck (or wandered into Giselle’s bedroom). You hear time and time again that the inner city street kid with 7 brothers made good in the NFL and brought up his entire family. That happens because that kid has to do it. It is his only way out.
Then you gotta have fight in you.
This is the hardest part. It is easy to lay down and to blame and to say, well this is my situation, so I guess I’ll make the best of it. Fighters say, this is my situation and I’m going to change it entirely. After they say it they act and they suffer and they push through all of the adversity. The rest of us see an overwhelming amount of adversity and stop once we’ve been overwhelmed. Fighters see overwhelmed as just the beginning. Remember: how we respond to failure is how we are defined by the world and by ourselves.
Winner’s don’t take days off.
You better bring it. When you slack, when you don’t give your all every moment of the time you get to walk this planet you are cheating yourself and you are telling yourself that it is okay to be a slacker because tomorrow you can be better. Well every tomorrow you are a moment older, less capable, less willing to change the way you lived yesterday. After long enough of living like this you hit the tipping point and you discover that getting back to being better is going to take more fight than you have left.
I say this for anyone reading and I say it for myself. Bring it every day, because before too long potential becomes an obstacle you never could overcome.