Learn to sweat in peace

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 playing 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 demanding to see, fired the ball in to
us at alarming speeds during the games.

We began dreading going up to the plate to hit. It wasn't fun. Batting
had become something we just tried to get through without
embarrassing ourselves too much.
Then Rett got an idea.
"What if the pitches we faced in games were slower than the ones we
face every day in practice?" Rett asked.
"That's just the problem," I said. "We don't know anybody who can
pitch that fast to us. That's why, in the games, it's so hard. The ball looks
like an aspirin pill coming in at 200 miles an hour."
"I know we don't know anyone who can throw a baseball that fast," said
Rett. "But what if it wasn't a baseball?"
"I don't know what you mean," I said.
Just then Rett pulled from his pocket a little plastic golf ball with holes
in it. The kind our dads used to hit in the backyard for golf practice.
"Get a bat," Rett said.
I picked up a baseball bat and we walked out to the park near Rett's
house. Rett went to the pitcher's mound but came in about three feet
closer than usual. As I stood at the plate, he fired the little golf ball past
me as I tried to swing at it.
"Ha ha!" Rett shouted. "That's faster than anybody you'll face in little
league! Let's get going!"
We then took turns pitching to each other with this bizarre little ball
humming in at incredible speeds. The little plastic ball was not only
hilariously fast, but it curved and dropped more sharply than any little
leaguer's pitch could do.
By the time Rett and I played our next league game, we were ready.
The pitches looked like they were coming in slow motion. Big white
balloons.

I hit the first and only home run I ever hit after one of Rett's sessions. It
was off a left-hander whose pitch seemed to hang in the air forever
before I creamed it.
The lesson Rett taught me was one I've never forgotten. Whenever I'm
afraid of something coming up, I will find a way to do something that's
even harder or scarier. Once I do the harder thing, the real thing
becomes fun.
The great boxer Muhammad Ali used to use this principle in choosing
his sparring partners. He'd make sure that the sparring partners he
worked with before a fight were better than the boxer he was going up
against in the real fight. They might not always be better all-around, but
he found sparring partners who were each better in one certain way or
another than his upcoming opponent. After facing them, he knew going
into each fight that he had already fought those skills and won.
You can always "stage" a bigger battle than the one you have to face. If
you have to make a presentation in front of someone who scares you,
you can always rehearse it first in front of someone who scares you
more. If you've got something hard to do and you're hesitant to do it,
pick out something even harder and do that first.
Watch what it does to your motivation going into the "real" challenge.

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