I got this one from Reader's Digest, believe it or not. I would read it cover-to-cover every month when I was a kid. The story was about the Spetznaz (sp?), the USSR's special forces. They were baaaaad. And they were coming for us. The story said their motto is "Train hard, fight easy," which is what stuck with me. Pretty great advice. It sort of crystallized that if you spend the effort when you don't have to yet, when it doesn't matter yet, then you will save big-time at crunch time.

But I'm applying this to my adult years. Life has all kinds of challenges, of course, but things for me just slowly, steadily got harder. I reached an I-just-can't-cope type crisis, eventually. A bunch of pretty basic issues had to get worked out. By then it was not a real convenient time to do that.

OK, now, Wodehouse-like, I will artfully tie the two threads together. In my younger adulthood, I was strong. Not just physically. I was brash and forceful and self-confident. I took things on with little doubt and it took a lot to shake me. I could have used that time and that strength to work on those issues. That would have been a "train hard, fight easy" approach. Instead, I used my strength to run over them roughshod, not dealing with them. When my strength began to wane, the issues and problems took me down. That was "train easy, fight hard." It didn't work as well.

It's very easy to waste one's strength, and very hard not to. Since I largely wasted mine, it's a little tough for me to say how to go about using it well. It involves self-knowledge and humility and living intentionally and making hard decisions.