A Champion’s 4 D’s to Succeed Part 2: Dedication
In part 1 “Desire,” I covered that having a deep burning desire is the number one prerequisite to achieving a goal. If you have the fierce desire that will drive you towards your end goal, then it is time to develop a plan and stay dedicated to that plan.
Develop your plan and stay DEDICATED!
In Part 1, I stated that a plan was not the most important thing that you need to do in order to achieve your goals. That is true. People have plans all of the time, but just because they have a plan, does not get them to their goal. That being said, if you have all of the desire in the world and your plan sucks, then you can forget about being the next Fresh Prince of Bel Air (love that intro song). It won’t happen for you. For example, if your goal is to gain 20 pounds of muscle and your plan is to follow the all seeing all knowing Ron White’s advice and, “Sit on the couch naked eating Cheetos,” then I’m sorry to say that hypertrophic gains are not in your future. When you sit down to write out your plan (that’s right, you have to write it out) to achieve your goals, I highly suggest you seek council from people who have achieved your goal or who have helped others achieve your goal. When I wanted to be a strength coach at the collegiate level, I knew I couldn’t do it alone. So, I asked the advice of my Strength and Conditioning Coach at George Mason University, Todd Hamer who told me to volunteer for Tony Decker at Temple University who was one of the best in the business. Don’t get me wrong, I thought I was a smart kid (I might have been the only one who thought this), but I never would have gone out of my way to volunteer for Coach Decker, without the council of Coach Hamer. In the end, the volunteer work ended up being the best experience I’ve had as a strength coach and it helped me get my first job. But make sure you realize that the planning process didn’t stop with getting the gig at Temple University with Coach Decker. There were a lot of other volunteers there as well, and they didn’t end up where I did (some did, but most did not). I had a better plan than the others. My plan was to make sure that I was the first coach at the gym in the morning and the last one to leave and to take notes on everything that Decker had to say, so that I could soak it all up and have something to reference when I left. I’d also have a great mentor to give me a reference for a job when the time came. This is where the dedication part came in! You see, the life of a strength coach is to live in the gym. We had teams from 5:30 in the morning until 7:00 at night some nights and you can bet that I stayed for the whole thing. I didn’t always want to (even though I loved most of it), but I knew that the dedication to my plan would pay off in helping me reach my goals, and in the end it did. I was able to make training people to be strong my career.
I remember when I was taking my CrossFit Level 1 Course at CrossFit King of Prussia, they had a quote on the wall that I won’t forget because it applied to how you have to attack your plan day in and day out and it said, “If tomorrow you want to do what others can’t, today you have do what others won’t.” Develop a great plan and then follow through with that plan even if the obstacles to following through with your plan seem insurmountable. That process, work ethic and attitude will propel you towards meeting any goal that you want to achieve. That’s true DEDICATION. In Part 3 I will cover DETERMINATION.
