The NFL is back, and I couldn't be happier.
There is something different about the first few weeks of an NFL season. Every fan thinks their team might have a chance. Every new player looks like they could be the missing piece. Every offseason move suddenly feels brilliant. Even the teams everyone expects to be terrible can convince themselves that maybe this is finally their year. Thirty-two teams start the season with different expectations, different rosters, and different challenges, but every single one of them ultimately wants the same thing: to be playing in the Super Bowl.
The funny part is that we already know how this ends for almost everyone. Only two teams will actually make it to the Super Bowl. Thirty teams won't. Some teams will have great seasons that end one game too early. Others will barely miss the playoffs. A few will probably know halfway through the season that there isn't a chance in hell they're playing football in February. That's sports. There can only be two teams left standing at the end.
Yet all 32 teams prepared like they could be one of them.
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Think about the amount of work that happened before the first meaningful football was even kicked off. Players spent months working out, studying film, rehabbing injuries, learning playbooks, practicing routes, lifting weights, attending training camp, and competing for roster spots. Coaches spent thousands of hours building game plans and evaluating players. Organizations spent millions of dollars trying to improve their rosters. Nobody showed up to training camp saying, "Well, statistically speaking, we're probably not going to win the Super Bowl, so let's take it easy."
They prepare like they're going.
I think there is something we can learn from that when it comes to our careers and our lives. We have become obsessed with knowing whether something is going to work before we're willing to put everything we have into it. We want some sort of guarantee that we're going to get the promotion before we take on the extra responsibility. We want to know the business will succeed before we start it. We want to know somebody will hire us before we apply. We want confirmation that all the work is eventually going to pay off.
Unfortunately, life doesn't work that way. You can prepare your ass off and still lose. You can do everything right, and someone else might be better. You can work toward a promotion for two years and watch someone else get it. You can build a company that fails. You can interview for a job you desperately want and finish second. You can write the book and nobody buys it. The possibility of losing doesn't somehow make the preparation worthless.
The preparation is actually the entire point. Every season a bunch of NFL teams will fall short of the ultimate goal, but the work they put in will develop players, uncover future stars, make coaches better, expose weaknesses, and create the foundation for whatever comes next. Maybe they don't win it this year. Maybe the quarterback they drafted needs another season. Maybe they're one player away. They don't know. They simply keep preparing for the possibility that eventually everything comes together.
We should probably approach more of our careers the same way. Prepare for the job you don't have yet. Build the skills before somebody asks you to use them. Develop the relationships before you desperately need them. Start working toward the opportunity even though there is absolutely no guarantee you're ever going to get it. Put yourself in the best possible position so that if your moment actually arrives, you're ready for it instead of wishing you had started six months earlier.
You don't prepare because you're guaranteed to make it. You prepare because you want to be ready if you do.
Thirty-two NFL teams started this season chasing the same trophy, and thirty of them will eventually fall short. None of them know today exactly how their season will end. That's what makes the beginning so damn exciting. There is hope. There is possibility. There is a reason to prepare. Maybe that's the lesson for the rest of us, too. You don't prepare because you're guaranteed to make it. You prepare because you want to be ready if you do.