Is this the Greatest Quote of all Time?

There is a quote that I heard recently. It has been living rent free in my brain ever since I heard it. It is amazing and I want to share it with you. It is this. It’s from Vince Lombardi. He says, fatigue makes cowards of us all. Now, he was talking through the context of football when you’re exhausted at the end of game, and how it’s very easy to not give that extra a 5% or go that extra couple of inches, and how when you’re exhausted, you’re a coward. You’re not willing to show up to the battle in the same way that you were when you’re fresh.

And we all go through this right now. He was talking through the context of physical exertion. However, I was thinking about this recently through a slightly different lens. I was thinking about it through the lens of something that my rock climbing mentor once told me. He said, do hard things. And that was his whole life motto, just do hard things. His thesis was, if you do hard things and you make yourself useful, you’re going to have a good life. That was it.

Pretty simple life philosophy that I can’t say I disagree with. But here’s the thing, is that doing hard things is so much harder when you’re tired. And everybody that’s listening to this podcast. This podcast is called amplified impact. It is for people who are in pursuit of the highest and best, their greatest selves, who are on a mission to make an impact on the world. They’re not going to play the game small. They’re not going to diminish their light so that others will feel more comfortable. They’re willing to do what is necessary, the hard work.

Because the truth is, like pursuing your greatness is hard, by definition, it is hard. So on this path, we fully expect the path to be difficult, but there’s no need to make it harder than necessary, right? And if we know that fatigue makes cowards of us all, and we know that doing hard things is so much harder when you’re tired, then the first step towards unlocking your greatness is simply get better sleep, get more recovery, take care of your body, take care of your nutrition, make sure you’re fueled up, make sure you’re not fatigued. Now, I know this is easier said than done, and a lot of that is probably due to the fact that most of us were never really taught how to actually sleep, right. We just take for granted that we instinctively know at nighttime, lights get dark. Lay in a dark room and close your eyes and you’ll fall asleep, right and yet, I don’t know about you, but I certainly didn’t know how to sleep very well for a really long time. It wasn’t until I was like 35, 36 years old that I started tracking my sleep with an aura ring and a WHOOP that I started to realize, oh, man, I’m really bad at sleeping. Like, really, really bad. I’m restless.

I wake up so many times in the night. And it wasn’t until I was 35, 36 years old that I started getting really serious about improving the quality of my sleep. And once I did that, once I started making that investment into my sleep, I started to see really big gains in the rest of my life. Specifically, the fact that the hard things in life started getting easier. And this is so amazing because life is going to throw hard things at you. And I want you to build the muscle of doing hard things and being prepared to take on difficulty in life. That’s important, for sure. But again, we don’t need to make things any harder than necessary.

So we might as well show up to the battle fresh and perky eyed and ready. What is the phrase? Bushy tailed. Perky eyed and bushy tailed. I don’t think that’s a thing people say, but all that’s to say, sleep is the foundation, I think, of courage. That’s what I’m going to go with here. If fatigue makes cowards of us all, then sleep is the foundation of courage. I don’t know if there’s much truth in that, but I like the way it sounds, so we’re going to stick with it. So a while back, I did a sleep guide where I went step by step by step all the investments that I’ve made over the last number of years into my sleep.

I call it the ultimate guide to sleep. I think we did a podcast episode on this as well here. You can go find that episode, or you can just go to anthonyvacino.com sleep. Go look at the sleep guide. If that is something that you struggle with, then go read up on that. It lays out my exact blueprint for how to go through a shutdown protocol, how to sleep, and then how to wake up. Get those three things dialed in, and you, my friend, will be not a coward or whatever. What’s the opposite of a coward? A hero, a brave man, a brave woman, a brave person.

So go check that out. And that’s going to do it for me, guys, I just wanted to share that quote. It’s been living rent free in my head, and it’s been amazing. I think it’s so true. Whenever I’m feeling tired, my willpower, my discipline, my desire to. To push and do great things diminishes greatly. So take care of your sleep, and I will see you in the next episode. Until then, stay hyper focused, my friends.