Maintaining Success: How To Avoid Complacency

“Even if you’re on the right track, you’ll get run over if you just sit there.” –Will Rogers

As the famous quote from actor and comedian Will Rogers tells us, you’re only as good as your last game. In order to be truly successful, you have to constantly strive to be better.

It’s easy to bask in the glory of a win and become complacent. As a student-athlete on a prominent team, you will receive both deserved and undeserved praise. However, if you don’t get over the complacency that success brings, someone else who is working harder will come up from behind and knock you down from the top.

Remember that for every success you have and piece of praise you receive, you will endure failure and criticism. There are countless examples of people who reached success but then quickly let it slip away. Avoid failure and irrelevancy by matching a victory with more determination. Don’t be a person that only enjoys short-lived success—work hard for enduring success.

Adversity is certainly a challenge we all must face throughout our lives. However, success is just as difficult. A win can make it hard to maintain focus because you don’t have the type of motivation that a loss inspires.

Losing is provocative; winning is satisfying.

After a win, it takes discipline to keep working and remain focused because you are caught up in emotion and detached from the rigor of routine. Give yourself a day to enjoy the triumph and then move on to setting new goals and working tirelessly toward them.

Again, remember: you are only as good as your last victory.

After winning the 2014 AT&T Cotton Bowl and becoming SEC East Champions, the Mizzou Football Family got right back to training. They moved past a success, set more ambitious goals and are putting in the time, energy and dedication to realize those goals. Right now the team is spending the summer gearing up for the 2014 season by training regularly. In a nod to Will Rogers, the players refuse to be overlooked.

About the quote:

Will Rogers was a 1920s and ‘30s comedian, actor and writer. He was famous for his vaudeville performances in the early 1900s and his roles in dozens of films including Doctor Bull (1933), Judge Priest (1934) and Steamboat Round the Bend (1934). His most well known quote is, “I never met a man I didn’t like.”