Patience and Ambition:  Opposite, yet mutually integral to winning.

Patience- promotes calculation, timing, discipline and recuperation

 

Ambition- promotes action, supreme confidence, aggressive tactics, and defiance of the odds

 

There are many men with ambition but no patience who quit an endeavor shortly after they start.  There are many men with patience but no ambition who settle for mediocrity and don’t take risks.

In lifting, the overly ambitious skip warmups, lift too heavy too often, or lack consistency.  The overly patient never break plateaus, train too infrequently, and shy from heavy weights.

On the battlefield of life, patience is what tells you when to prepare a fortification, pivot your forces, pull back, hide, wait for the right moment to strike and to live to fight another day.  Ambition is what tells you when to march upon your enemy faster than seemed possible, ambition is when one man’s courage can inspire an entire army otherwise ready to retreat, and ambition is slamming your sword into your enemy’s neck with such ferocious authority that he never even lifts his sword in an attempt to defy his fate.

The man who balances his ambition with patience, wins.