The finish line is in sight and all of a sudden your ankle hurts, your feet hurt, you can barely breath...so you give up. Is this because you physically could not push yourself to the end? Probably not. Your mind will quit on you faster than your body will. Chances are you are having a fear of success.
This may not make much sense, but in many ways we are scared to push ourselves to the brink of our abilities out of fear that we will come up short and our flaws will be exposed. We don't like change and if we succeed things will change, standards will increase, and expectations will be higher. Sometimes we may even feel that we are not worthy of victory because of experiences from our past.
In many ways we subconsciously sabotage ourselves out of pure fear of what may happen if we succeed. I've stayed up too late partying in college the night before a big test because I was not confident that I could pass. So, when I inevitably failed my test I was able to give myself a way out by trying to convince myself that with the appropriate sleep I would have passed.
Don't look for a way out and don't sell yourself short. You wouldn't enter the race if you didn't want to win.
We should be less afraid of pushing ourselves hard enough to see what we're made of than being too scared to even find out.
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