“there is no tomorrow…”

When Liam, naseba group’s marketing director, told me about his idea for me to start my own blog, I kind of laughed it off …but when Agata and Josephine from my communications team in our Monaco office started to get involved pushing me to do this — I realized very quickly, how this blog will also help keep me focused.

This morning is a great example.

I wake at 3:45 every day — I guess my early morning routine started when I was a swimmer – but since I can remember, I have woken very early. My alarm goes off at 3:45 which gives me 15 minutes to go down stairs, turn on my computer, make my coffee and toast and by 4am I am comfortably drinking my coffee and reading the news and then my emails. By 5:15am I go running for an hour. I am a man of ritual … so I do this routine even when I travel.

I go to sleep around 8:30pm every night so even though I wake early – I still get enough sleep.

Anyways … . This morning, same thing …I woke, made my coffee, read the news until 5:00 then opened the door to go running and discovered it was pouring down rain.

As I started walking to warm up my legs for my hour run, it was absolutely pouring down rain..freezing, windy and raining like crazy … I was thinking “screw this…”

…I gave myself at least 20 excuses why I should go back inside and skip the run this morning …”I might get sick…it’s raining, and no one runs in the pouring rain, it’s cold …I was only wearing a t-shirt and shorts and not a jacket…I’ll just run tonight …I can always skip a day…I will run more tomorrow…”

As my mind was telling me “go back inside and skip this run….” I thought of my blog … I thought about Liam and the team that are driving this project … then I said to myself, “F…… IT, I am going to run.”

It absolutely poured down rain … was super windy…. and of course I froze my butt off, but during my run I kept thinking about how mental everything is … what I mean by “mental” is how everything is in our head …. if I tell myself enough “its too rainy and too cold to run” of course it becomes, too rainy and too cold to run.

This morning I gained strength from the cold and rain that poured down on me. My gorgeous run route along the coast of Mediterranean sea from Monaco to the border of Menton and back, normally take me between 55 – 65 minutes — this morning, because of the strong wind and rain, the run took me an hour and 10 minutes… but I survived and feel great.

In my opinion, “consistency” has to be one of the secrets to success.

Everyday we will face obstacles in our lives that might prevent us from doing what we need to do to be successful and or achieve our goals…some of the obstacles might be physical — but most are “mental.”

My favorite Rocky movie was “Rocky III” … as silly as some people might think that movie to be, there is a quote that puts things into perspective….when Rocky told Apollo Creed that he wanted to take a break and start his training again “tomorrow.”

Apollo shouted over and over: “There is no tomorrow…there is no tomorrow….”

Too many of us look forward to starting something again …”tomorrow…”

Tomorrow we will start that diet…tomorrow we will do more lead research…tomorrow we will re-start our training….tomorrow we will work harder…

Next time something mental gets in the way of your routine … remember: “there is no tomorrow….”