“You must get better every day.”

Sometimes there’s lots of room for improvement.

I live in Dallas - an NFL city. Training camp for the Dallas Cowboys is news. Constantly. The media reports every sneeze, every ache and every minute detail of the team. It’s nauseating really. But today, a player was being interviewed - Akin Ayodele. He’s a linebacker, a 6-year veteran. He’s got a little brother, rookie Remi, who is trying to make the team. He said he’s been telling Remi, “You must get better every day!”

For professional athletes the stakes are high - or they can be. Make the team and you can earn hundreds of thousands of dollars (at least) and call yourself a Dallas Cowboy. Pretty heady stuff for a young man in his 20’s.

Step it up. Turn it up a notch. Show ‘em what you’re made of. We use all of these (and many other) phrases to demonstrate the importance of improvement. Often, that improvement must be demonstrated under pressure, not at our leisure. Every adult knows the place where “put up” meets “shut up.” Sometimes it’s difficult to shine when you know so much is at stake, but that’s exactly what separates those men who make an NFL roster - and those who remain on the practice squad (that’s where Remi was last year).

You must get better every day.

It sounds so simple. How hard can it be? I mean, it’s not like yesterday was perfect. It may have even been disastrous in some ways - so doing better than yesterday may not seem challenging at all. But continuous improvement - KAIZEN as the Japanese call it - is vital to every winning endeavor. Finding a job. Keeping a job. Finding a mate. Keeping a mate. Doing good work. Making a difference.

You must get better every day.

Sometimes, all it takes is a commitment. Observe the people in your life. Observe the ones who are near, and the ones who are remote. How many are really committed to daily improvement? How many of them have made any significant changes recently? Probably very few. Most of us do what we’ve always done. We are who we are - and we limit ourselves to what we’ve always been.

That’s not how you improve. You improve by making up your mind that you’re going to change the things that hold you back - those things that prevent you from accomplishing what you want. Those things that prevent you from being what you’d like. Those things that stand in your way of getting that job, starting that career, dating that person…and all the other things you’d do “if only…”

You must get better every day. If you’re not getting better, why not? What are you going to do about it? When are you going to do something about it? What’s keeping you from doing it now - today?