Practice With PURPOSE!

Practice With Purpose

The title that I actually stated on today's podcast for this message was, "Practice, Practice, Practice". However, after getting into the podcast I began to focus on the idea posted above - "Practice With Purpose".

What do I mean and why are we talking about practice?

Everything you do today is practice for tomorrow. That's right! Yes, I know that I always emphasize the fact that "tomorrow" doesn't actually exist and that all we have is today. That is true, BUT we must still prepare ourselves for every "TODAY" that we have, wouldn't you agree?

What is the PURPOSE of practice? Think about it. The PURPOSE of PRACTICE is to work through mistakes and correct them so that you don't make them "in the game".

That being said, we can now relax and understand that it is o.k. to make mistakes as long as we have a PURPOSE and we work to CORRECT those mistakes - make sense?

In today's podcast I share the story of a basketball team that I was on in Jr. High as well as Sr. High. We ran and we ran A LOT! Lap after lap after lap and spent very little time practicing plays, dribbling, etc. I would guess we spent as much time running (if not more) as we did in actual practice. And, guess what? WE WERE TERRIBLE! When we got into a game our ball handling skills were not what they needed to be, our plays didn't work well and, overall, we just didn't seem to know what we were doing.

WHY? Because, in my opinion, our PRACTICE lacked PURPOSE!

Sure, we could run up and down the court all night long with the best of them (and, by the way, we DID do a lot of running up and down the court trying to catch up with the other team!) - but that is not what would allow us to play competitively.

We moved to a different town for my Senior year. New school, new team, new coach and yes, new philosophy!

Guess what? We ran and we ran A LOT! But, guess what else? We won and we WON A LOT! If I remember right, we only lost 3 games that whole year.

What was the difference? At this new school our PRACTICE had PURPOSE!

You see, although we ran as much (if not more) than I did at my old school, very little of it was done with laps and sprints. Most of the running we did was in practice. We practiced FULL COURT (not half court like a lot of teams) so that we would run up and down the court while dribbling the basketball, getting set up to run the play, blocking out to get rebounds and also playing defense. By doing so, when we actually got "in the game" we knew what to do and how to do it and - guess what - we were also in excellent shape and could still run up and down the court all night long!

So it is with each and every one of us every day.

Yes, TODAY is PRACTICE but we must PRACTICE with PURPOSE!

Do NOT allow yourself to just drift through your day and use this "practice" idea as an excuse. "Oh well, Mike said it's o.k. to make mistakes, so I'm alright."

NO!

Again, the PURPOSE of PRACTICE is to learn from and correct those mistakes! We must ALL be learning from and correcting the mistakes that we make TODAY so that we won't make them over and over and over again. This will enable us to experience SUCCESS more often as we move toward our goals and dreams!

Your life has PURPOSE today because you understand and realize that you PRACTICE today with the PURPOSE of improving your tomorrow!

Isn't that AWESOME to think about? Wow!

So, it is up to you! Yes, we will ALL go through the day. We will ALL have the same 24 hours to use (or abuse) and we will ALL come to the end of our day even if at different times of that day.

When you lay your head on the pillow at night you can either feel FULFILLED because you lived a day of PURPOSE or you can feel EMPTY because there was no PURPOSE or direction in your life at all during the day.

What will it be for you?

PRACTICE WITH PURPOSE and, as always...

"Make it an AWESOME day! (Who else is going to do it for you?)"

Mike