People often say, my goal is to prove somebody wrong. "All that hard work paid off when I dunked on him and people went nuts," or "all that hard work paid off when i took home the trophy." My reply would be, stop lying to yourself, but i don't say it because it's not good to be bold enough to the point to cause trouble.
The payoff is not what you did or the outcome of your hard work. Hard work in and of itself is the pay off. When you are content with the present... you will always have joy when you train. From a psychological standpoint, joy gives you a tremendous advantage over those that are training out of anger. They are mad at the world. they are living for somebody else. they are trying to prove somebody else wrong. sure in the short run, anger and aggression will give you a boost, but life and training is not a 100m dash but a marathon.
This past year i took training way too seriously, and in turn, my training hurt pretty badly. I had to give up training. and I mean give it up totally... the aspiration of gliding through the air. And that was when I found new life in my training. I had to put on the mentality, that if i won't increase another inch of my vertical, that i will be okay with it. And when I had that mentality, training became joy, and not just training.
