Choose your hard

The origins of the well-known phrase “Choose your hard” apparently stem from a poem written by Devon Brough, but in the last few years, it has gone viral with good reason.

The idea of the phrase is that everything you do in life is hard, so if you truly desire to achieve success in whatever arena of life is important to you, you have to make the decision to
do so.

For example, being physically fit is hard, but being obese is also hard.

Working hard to advance in your career is hard, but working a monotonous, low-paying job is also hard.

Taking challenging classes in school to get a degree or even training for a technical job is hard, but working a minimum wage job is also hard.

Being financially successful is hard, but being broke is harder.

Maintaining a healthy lifestyle is hard, but disregarding your health is also hard. 

I think you get the picture.

The idea of what kind of hard you want to live with is also very applicable to sports.

Playing in a tough 3A conference where Newcastle High School faces off against bigger schools with a much larger pool of athletes from which to choose is very hard, but not reaching the dreams of putting a banner on the wall of the Dogie Dome is
also hard.

To compete with those schools, we have to elicit much more out of our athletes than the Douglas’s and Buffalo’s of the state. While they have a bench full of capable athletes, Newcastle often has to rely on a lot fewer players who are being asked to play much more of a game than the other team, so are more likely to succumb to fatigue and just plain run out of gas.

It’s hard. But losing to those teams over and over is hard as well.

Obviously, we can’t simply will our teams to defeat the juggernauts of the 3A East, however, we can put in the work to put ourselves in the best possible position to turn the tables on them.

How do we do that? We choose our hard.

Putting in time in the off season to improve our skills and our strength is hard, but facing off against teams who have refined their skills and built their strength is hard as well.

Conditioning and working hard in practice is hard, but then playing a full game without the proper conditioning preparation is harder. 

Playing a full game with our foot on the gas is hard, but having the other team outwork us is also hard.

Winning is hard, but losing is harder.

Though putting in 110% to whatever you endeavor won’t necessarily guarantee your success, knowing that you left everything you have on your arena of play makes not quite reaching your goal a little easier to handle.

When you choose to put forth the effort, no matter how hard it is, you will either succeed or be able to look back without regrets.

So, we just need to choose our hard.