Chasing Your Goats

I remember meeting my first GOAT.

First week of school at Bishop Feehan. I barely knew anyone.

I was a freshman, and I was standing in line to see the athletic trainer. I was about to walk into the trainers room, and this guy cut the line. An old dude pushed him in- he was an AD and needed his star football player fixed up.

When he was done, he walked up to me and said, “Sorry”, and gave me a strong pat on the shoulder. But the thing that changed everything was that I watched him walk down the hall- everyone’s behavior changed as he passed them.

I didn’t realize that I had my first interaction with a GOAT.

He was an incredible 3-sport athlete, was en route to an All-American career at an Ivy League school, and a stint in the NFL. He was a senior at the time, but he carried himself so different. He dominated in everything that he did; in the classroom, in the weight room, on the field, and in the community.

He never broke a sweat.

I watched him interact with a mutual friend- he was asked a question,

“How do you do it?”

How did he continuously do incredible things everyday and keep picking up steam without breaking a sweat? He looked at my buddy with a puzzled face.

“I just make it normal”.

He went on to explain that we should be EXPECTING greatness out of ourselves…and when we do something special…we shouldn’t be surprised about it. We are supposed to be programmed to continuously strive and level up every chance we get. It is up to us to interpret what we are doing.

We could set a bench press PR, and we’d be like,

“Woo! I can’t believe I did that!”

…or

“Cool, we’ll go up another 5 pounds next week. Let’s go get something to eat.”

We need to find our GOATS that we can continuously chase, strive towards, and model ourselves after. It doesn’t have to be the ‘full picture’. We can find our GOATS in specific avenues. Let’s take golf for example.

We could chase Bryson Dechambeau’s driving power.

We could chase Tiger’s gamer mindset.

We could chase Scottie Scheffler’s consistency.

We can mix and match things, traits, skills and mold them into who we want to be someday. The more we stick to the process, that ‘someday’ will come closer.

Who’s your GOAT?