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"The best preparation for tomorrow is to do today's work superbly well."

- Sir William Osler

Life is a cycle of preparation and production. You go to the gym, workout, lift, run, jump or take classes. You prepare, then weeks later, you will have results. You’ll have bigger muscles. Shed fat. You'll have produced the body that you've always wanted. The body that you desire. But preparation is always the toughest part of the cycle. It’s also the longest part.

A woman will carry a baby for nine months. She will change her lifestyle, eating habits and her entire thought process in order to accommodate a new life. Her hormones will change. She will take classes on motherhood. She will learn how to deal with those 18 hours of labour.

It's crazy when you think about it; months and months of preparation for 18 hours of labour. Hours and hours of preparation for a few minutes of production. All for that infinite joy when the baby is born.

After you experience the joy of a newborn, you must then care for it. Thus begins the journey of preparing that little person for their own moments of production: going to school, graduating, getting their first job, etc. And in those small moments of achievement, you can celebrate all of the hard work that you’ve put in to get them to get place. In those moments, you can sit in the pews with tears in your eyes because of the pride and joy from your child receiving a diploma, or degree.

Those short-lived moments are all a part of this cycle in life. But it's in those stages of preparation that your challenges come.

We aren't really challenged when we're plucking fruit from a tree. It's not hard to climb a tree and shake it to make fruit fall down. But it is hard to make sure you water that plant everyday so the sun doesn’t scorch it. It's tough to protect that plant from the elements. And it's even harder to cultivate and groom that seed, because the stages of preparation are tougher than the stages of production.

Think of those times when you face challenges; you are preparing to show the world how great you are. When the world sees you - the final product - they will see an accumulation of preparation performed day in and day out. What they'll see is someone who overcame something over and over again so that they could produce fruit. So as you show everybody how great you are, as you show them that you're an overcomer who can prepare and produce, remember where you came from. Remember what you overcame. Remember what preparation it took to get to where you’re at. Live. Celebrate it. Love it. And show me how great you are.

#GetAfterIt

 

- JH

 

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