Unlike most war generals, Alexander had brass balls and believed in leading his men from the front. Because of this, his body got absolutely pummeled over the years. He took a cleaver to the head, a catapult missile to the chest, a sword to the thigh, arrows to the leg, ankle and lung, a dart through the shoulder and a stone to the head. Over the course of Alexander's eleven year long campaign, it's fair to assume he didn't live a single day"pain free". He "played hurt" as they say in modern athletics.

You read about the absurd shit Alexander was able to pull off and its forgivable to believe he felt like a million fucking bucks. Take the city of Tyre, for example, off the coast of what today is Lebanon. Tyre wasn't really a city but a giant sea fortress. Alexander wanted to sack it but he didn't have a navy. So, he ordered his men to turn the island into a peninsula. They literally built a massive land bridge that stretched 1,000 meters to the city gates. Once the bridge was complete, Alexander marched his troops right up to the font door and laid siege.

To this day, archeologists still can't really figure out how he did it––but he did and today, modern-day Tyre is no longer an island but an actual peninsula. What fascinates me most about all of this is that Alexander likely pulled this shit off while nursing the cleaver-to-the-head injury or perhaps the catapult-missile-to-the-chest wound. He played hurt.

Nothing you nor I will ever rub up against on a daily basis could even remotely be compared to ancient warfare. However, this idea of "playing hurt" is something to reflect on. The conditions will never be perfect for you to do your best work. Greatness, at least to some degree, is our willingness to do our best work when we have every excuse not to.