Here's as good of a breakdown you'll find from Eli Drinkwitz (@CoachDrinkwitz) on the duality strength building, resisting instant gratification, and having the propensity to not skip steps: 🛡️ Most things in life carry an inverse relationship between short-term and long-term outcomes. What feels good now often creates pain later. What feels painful now often creates rewards later. The best performers in any field understand this tradeoff. They consistently choose the investment over the indulgence. Eventually, delayed gratification stops being a behavior and becomes an identity. Meaning you no longer choose hard because of the reward waiting on the other side. You choose it because because the reward was becoming the type of person who can handle it. 🐣 It's natural to choose the path of least resistance, because we're protectors at our core. Protect our children, protect our players, protect ourselves. But It's counter to our / their long term growth. Struggle produces strength. A large part of the leader's job, and our responsibility for our own growth, is to seek discomfort and learn the lessons that come from pain or patience. 🪜 The only way to climb the ladder is one step at a time. In sports, in your marriage, in your job, in anything you want to ascend or get better at. There are no elevators to excellence. You have to graduate from every moment by choosing the path less traveled. Those choices yield the reward of evidence that you're the type of person who digs deeper, goes further, and can suffer more without quitting. You become so committed to mastering each step that one day you look up and realize you've reached heights that once seemed impossible. Every setback becomes another layer of armor. Every storm becomes an opportunity to prove what @MizzouFootball has built. While others are searching for comfort, you've developed the capacity to endure discomfort. You can dig roots, spread wings, and flourish in a less crowded arena. And in a world increasingly addicted to instant gratification, the ability to consistently choose the long game becomes an expedited growth track that is nearly impossible to keep pace with. 🚆