Do you know where you are going?

Have you ever gotten something that you wanted? Of course you have! We learn to want things, to dream, and make things happen.

A wish or a hope lacks direction or a plan. However, a dream has pictures and feelings. It is part of the basic formula: Want, Picture, Plan, and Get!
Do you know of someone who is very successful? What is it that allowed them to succeed where so many others come up short?

They practiced simple disciplines every day, toward their predetermined objective. "They sacrificed what they wanted at the moment for what they wanted the most!" Most people do it the other way around. Rob Tate only won a single state title in high school, but was recruited to wrestle in a NCAA Division I program. He never attended a prom while he was in high school, because each year the Freestyle and Greco state tournament was on the same weekend. Rob sacrificed the prom to become a better wrestler, and his college coach recruited him on who Rob was, not what Rob had accomplished. As a redshirt freshman this year, Rob became Gardner Webb's youngest NCAA qualifier, and accomplished something most wrestlers never do, he won a match.

Winners know what they want life to look like when they "have made it." They have dreams, and work towards achieving them. They have a “blueprint” upon which they build their life. No matter how rough your blueprint is, it programs your mind for action. Then your mind can get to work on making your dream real. This is the only way that your mental picture can become a reality.

It’s like building a house one brick at a time. Your life is built the same way. If you don’t have a blueprint or plan to build a house and just add a brick at random, it will ramble all over the landscape, and never become anything more than a disarray of brick and wood. This would, of course, be disastrous for you. Do you know anybody whose life looked like that? These are people that only accept what is given to them and do not plan their life.

"Life can only be understood by looking backward, but it must be lived by looking forward." Who do you want to become? What would you like to be known for? When people are at the end of their lives, they seldom wish they had more things in their lives, they are more thankful for the relationships they've had. So many of us set goals "to have," yet forget to set goals "to become."

The best way to predict the future is to create it. You have two eyes to see it, and a third eye in your mind that can help create it. We are the masters of our fate, the captains of our souls, because we have the power to control our thoughts.
There must be something about writing down goals that scares people, because so few are willing to do it. It must be the fear of failure of a written commitment. The written commitment makes the goal like a contract with yourself that you must fulfill. As a rule, people take failures far too seriously because our society is so geared to winners. But, it is a strange thing that the biggest winners are also the biggest failures. In other words, they fail time and time again before they become winners. Many people have failed many times and come back stronger each time.

What we are talking about probably all comes back to the word “pain.” Failure is interpreted as pain and people want to avoid pain. However, for a real change to take place in people’s lives, the pain of unhappiness must be greater than the pain of change before a meaningful change can take place. It is my hope that you are dreaming and longing for success in every bone in your body. Picture it, feel it and plan it and you will not be denied.

"Learn from the mistakes of others, you can't live long enough to make them all yourself."

Paying the Price

"If you don't get what you want, it is a sign either that you did not seriously want it or that you tried to bargain for the price. There is a price for anything worth achieving." - Richard Kipling

In the last blog I spoke about the reason most people become discouraged and give up. They fail to Count the Cost of the things they want, and so when things get difficult they give up and quit.
The way to avoid this situation is to figure out what the cost is going to be, and decide if you are willing to pay that. So what does the price tag include? Here are just a few items:

1. Hard Work
There is no way around this--you cannot fulfill your dreams without a lot of blood, sweat, tears, and more than a little elbow grease. You also might have to spend time, perhaps large quantities of time, working diligently at tasks you don't particularly like in order to prepare yourself to reach those dreams.

2. Learning
Reaching that next level will probably require you to acquire some new skills and polish existing abilities. Are you willing to devote the time, money, and energy to making that happen?

3. Discipline
It takes focus and commitment to pursue your goal without getting sidetracked or giving up. Success doesn't just happen. You have to be intentional about it, and that means "doing what needs to be done, whether you feel like it or not."

4. Emotional Stamina
On your way toward your goal, you're going to stumble, and most likely take a few hard falls. When that happens, you've got to have the RESILIENCY to pick yourself up, dust yourself off, and get going again. Do you?

As you think about the price of reaching your goal, remember that the specifics vary from goal to goal. The only way to find out for sure how much you'll have to pay is to find someone who is already where you want to be and ask them about the cost. Find out what they DID in order to DO what they do.

It's up to you. If you know where you want to be but aren't there yet, stop making excuses and start working to make it happen. Don't put it off until tomorrow because that may be too late. As you begin, remember these 3 truths about what you end up with when pursuing a dream.
1. Reaching that goal will be different than you imagined it would be.
2. It will be more difficult than you ever imagined.
3. And it will be better than you ever imagined.
Start today!

Counting the Cost

Now that the competition season is in full swing, wrestlers are starting to see if the visions in their heads are dreams or goals. I have never met a wrestler (or any person for that matter) that starts out with the intent to fail. Early season talk is always about the championships, awards, and honors they are going to win. Yet, within just a few weeks, the majority of them will be relegated to "hopefully qualifying" or just getting close to success. What happens to those wonderful thoughts of glory? How do they go from visions of winning the "big matches" to settling for keeping the score close during a loss, or "at least not getting pinned?"

The answer is Reality. Too many wrestlers go into the season holding some superficial, positive, middle-class, I can-do-it "picture" in their minds and then run into some mean, hungry, determined SOB that rams their slick new technique down their dainty little throats.

Why does this happen? Because so many people try to buy championship success at bargain-basement prices. The fact is, the cost to reach those dreams is often much higher than people are willing to pay. I've seen more examples than I care to count. Wrestlers start "working out" a week or two before the season, or they've picked up a new move or two. They have lots of energy and enthusiasm, only to fizzle out when they find out things aren't going to be as easy as they thought. If they had counted the cost first -- if they had seriously investigated what it would take to make them successful in wrestling -- they may have competed in the off season, or worked harder in the weight room. Instead, they're right back where they started- dissatisfied and unfulfilled.

The good news is, You can avoid this scenario. In my next blog I'll discuss how to turn those dreams into goals, by "Paying the Price."

It's Not Where You Start, It's Where You Finish

This past weekend was great. It's been a long time since I have enjoyed a trip so much. After one of the longest breaks I have had in over 5 years, we were finally back on the mat. Four club wrestlers and I traveled to Virginia Beach for back to back tournaments on Saturday and Sunday. The weekend started off with a 6 hour drive to Virginia Beach. The first part of the trip went about like normal, everyone but me was asleep, but the last 3 hours were different. Everyone was awake, and we were having a great conversation about priorities. It's times like those that keep me going. It was a nice give and take, and it was rewarding to hear some thoughtful ideas from the wrestlers. These are the times that you get to know each other better and you find out who these young men really are.

I am a strong advocate of wrestling out of season. My elites compete almost year round. I do not demand that my wrestlers train out of season, but I do not think that any wrestler can be consistently good without it. There is no secret to success, it just takes HARD WORK! Heck, you will outperform over 80% of the people just by showing up and performing on a regular basis. If you work hard and have some desire you can beat another 15%, but that last 5% is always going to be a dog fight. Hard Work is the key to success in anything you do, but what separates "GREAT" from "GOOD"? It's Hard Work on the "RIGHT THINGS!" And that is where good people often wander off the path. They work hard, they put in a lot of time and effort, they are just not working on the things they need the most. How do you know what those things are? You get help. You surround yourself with people that can see what those things are. In my program, that's my job. But I can't see what you need help with if I don't see you compete.

I think hard work in the practice room is crucial to your success, but it's just busywork if you do not have a way of measuring your improvement. Competition gives you that. It will reveal what you have improved on, and what you still need to fix. But so many of my athletes avoid competition outside of the season. They are afraid that they will not do well, or are not good enough. That is exactly why they should be competing, especially out of season, it doesn't count. It's a free chance to see what you've got.

We will be competing the next two weeks in very tough tournaments. We will get to see some of the best wrestlers in the US. Justin sounded like the Champion he is when responded to another wrestler's verbal jab at him. In the first 10 seconds Justin was thrown to his back in his last match on Saturday. The wrestler said, "I thought you were going to get pinned, what were you thinking? That would suck to lose the last match like that." Justin responded, "It was a nice throw, but if I had gotten pinned, I would know what to look out for next time. It's a long season, and my goal is to be ready at the end. I'm not perfect and I'll make mistakes along the way, but as long as I have them corrected by the end it's ok." It was nice to hear one of our best wrestlers explain what I am always telling our team, "It's not where you start, it's where you finish that matters." That's also a good reason to avoid looking at where your opponents are ranked, but that is for a different blog.

Resiliency

Resiliency

"We will never participate in the promises of the future if we allow ourselves to be held captive by the pain of the past! " - Byrd Baggett

Resiliency - The ability to bounce back from failures.

I think resiliency is one of the most important traits necessary to become, but even more to remain, a champion. There are many traits that are needed to be successful: Persistence, Commitment, Focus, Desire, and Character are just a few. But resiliency is the one that separates the "Champions" from the winners.

Over the years, I have seen many wrestlers who start at a young age and are very successful early in their careers, but never make it in high school. I have seen wrestlers who do very well in their freshman or sophomore years but disappear later on. It takes a lot of work to become a Champion and it takes a special person willing to make the sacrifices in order to do the work. But once you achieve that Big Goal it takes a lot more work to stay at the top. There is an unspoken pressure on a Champion to have championship performances every time they compete. Everyone they compete against is out for them because of their accomplishments. This alone can be enough to wear some people down, but when they finally come up short in a big match or tournament (and they will because we are all human) the inability to let go of that pain can break people.

I have seen countless examples of wrestlers who could be great, but settle for less because of fear of failure. So many good high school athletes stop competing not because they have lost the will to win, but because they fear losing more. Coming up short of your goals hurts. Coming up short when you’re already a top performer hurts even more. But add to that loss the weight of your team’s performance, and the pain can be intolerable. A lot of people never recover from this, others continue but just go through the motions, never putting themselves on the line again. All of them have scars from the experience. A special few overcome those and rise to the top again.

East Gaston's wrestling program has a long tradition of excellence, and the risks for our top athletes to have a poor performance affect the team outcome are great. We have athletes now that I am sure feel the pressure every time they step on the mat. I am thankful that they have the courage to continue to step up in spite of the risk. I am thankful also to be around young men who have what it takes to get up and carry on. Two of our alumni have had to demonstrate great resilience in the past year.

Dusty McKinney, who is training to be East Gaston's first NCAA All-American has shown it. Just under a year ago Jared "Boo" Hogan died in a car accident. Dusty was a redshirt freshman at George Mason University. It was the first time since he started wrestling that he was not competing, and when we lost "Boo" it was especially hard on Dusty. They had been almost inseparable for years. Dusty was ready to pack it in. But he didn't. Slowly he found the strength to get up and go on, and this year he is more focused than ever.

Rob Tate has shown unbelievable resilience. As a defending state champion, and one of only 3 seniors, I'm sure Rob felt the silent expectations. A lot of them were his own. Rob suffered two losses at the end of the season that I am sure he believes cost him a state title, and worse, his team two state titles. This of course is not true. There are 14 weight classes and we had plenty of opportunities. But most people would never step foot on a mat again after experiencing such agony. Rob suffered from those, I can't imagine how much, but he has found the courage to get up and go again. He is competing for Gardner Webb University, and his coaches say he is one of the hardest workers they have. He is working to become one of EG's first NCAA All-Americans also. I am proud to know both Dusty and Rob and the many Warriors before them that have not only met the challenge of loss, but have used it to STAY WINNERS.

Is Your Elevator Going Up or Down

I was very fortunate in High School. I escaped without suffering from many of the poor choices my classmates then, and many of my athletes do today. Sports helped a lot. It kept me busy during the school year, and my Coaches expectations gave me some good boundaries. But there were a lot of hours in the day, and a lot of days in the year, when I was outside of their influence. I would like to say that I was just an exceptional person with great character, strong convictions, and a highly motivated achiever with a vision, but not even Michael Jackson could pull off that story. I was a ordinary teen. The reason I dodged many of those bullets: smoking, drinking, doing drugs, skipping school, etc. was because my best friend, Keith Costner, a person I grew up with and hung out with almost daily wasn't into those things. Pretty simple, huh. Thousands of books have been written on how to be successful, and I had not read one of them. So you might think that it was pure luck that I wound up with a friend that just wasn't interested in those things. I have no doubt that it was divine intervention. One of my favorite quotes is, "Friends are like Elevators, they are going to take you up or take you down." My parents, teachers, and coaches had probably told me to be careful about hanging out with "The Wrong Crowd!", but I don't think I would have realized if they were the wrong crowd.
Why do most people never achieve their goals?
Because they take advice from losers!
I tell my wrestlers this all the time. By "losers" I mean someone who has not done anything or at least they have not done what your wanting to do, themselves. Many of my elite athletes train year round. They make sacrifices in order to be great wrestlers, several have missed the prom to go to a tournament, or they pass on other events in order to train. But their non wrestling friends often say things like, "You work too hard. You are too focused on wrestling." They don't understand the price required to succeed at the top level, so why would someone wanting to be good, listen to their advice? I don't know but they do, which is about as useful as a blind mans description of the sun. Under this negative influence the wrestlers start thinking about the things that they are sacrificing instead of what they are trying to achieve.
To be successful you should surround yourself with positive people. Ones who will encourage you, support you, and help to remind you of your goals when you start to wonder off track. Get around winners, people who are heading in the direction you want to go. Spend some time thinking about whether the people you choose to spend time with are helping you toward your goal or away from it. Ask yourself are they taking me up, or down, and change the relationships that aren't helping you. Choose your friends wisely and maybe you won't need to be lucky.

Wrestler Theme Music

The Select team had practice last night. It was a good practice, we put in some nice top stuff, but as we were waiting around to start we were talking. Most of you have seen that starbucks commercial where the guy named hank is going down the street, and there is a group of people sitting there singing his name, "Hank!" "Hank!" That made me think about music for different people. I said if we ever needed to introduce Dusty, we would play SandStorm by DaRude as we gave his introduction. Well it didn't take long and that was the topic of conversation. What song or music would you use as your intro music. The choices took a little more thought than you might first guess. What song or music sums you up, or sets the tone you want. The wrestlers came up with some surprising answers, and we came up with some promo photo ideas also, but I'll have to save those concepts for the Warrior Wrestler Calendar, coming out later this year. ;-) Here are some of the ideas they came up with:
Justin tossed around a few, but then settled on Charlie Daniels, "Simple Man" Don't be confused by the Lynard Sknyard version, this is not the same song, and I have to agree it fits him like a glove.
Zack rattled off several choices also, but then started narrowing the field to Classic Rock choices "No Quarter" or "The immigrant Song" by Led Zepplin.
Of course we voted SandStorm for Dusty, but I can only imagine what he would choose for himself.
We decided that "GARY's" theme music would be a techo version of Spong Bob's theme music. "Gary! Now bring it around town." but I think tequila may be appropriate also.
Some of the others are still thinking about theirs.
So what do you think your theme song would be? Leave me a comment and let me know.

A modern GBU

Over the years, I have formed many relationships with the young men that have wrestled for me. My boys as I think of them have given me many great memories, and plenty of not so great ones also. For a couple of seasons, I wrote a Good Bad & Ugly summary when I returned from a trip to capture some of those memories. Today was a good one. I attended Eddie M. and Dawn's wedding. It was exactly what you would have expected from two such great people. They make a great couple, both of them have big hearts so I know there will never be any lack of love in their household. From the time they started dating in my yearbook class it was obvious that they were soul mates. It was good to see many other members of the wrestling family there, and as always a lot of story telling went on. The past year has been difficult. We lost Boo. That is one of the most difficult times I've had in my life, and definitely the most difficult that I've had as a coach. We came just short of our goal of a state title, TWICE. Some of the wrestlers made poor choices, and it cost them some of their dreams. Just this weekend I was disappointed by one of the wrestlers I put a tremendous amount of trust in. With me there is really only one thing that is automatic deal breaker, and that is dishonesty. BUT... as I watched Eddie and Dawn say their vowels, I was reminded again of why I love what I do so much. I have seen so many succeed when others thought they would fail. I have seen the joy of someone grasping that brass ring they thought they would Never get. I have felt the deepest sorrow, when the season is over and they were just a little short. That is life. Joy and pain, the ups and the downs. Not a week goes by that I don't walk among the clouds, and trod through the valleys. Most of the time the path seems to wind along a hilly trail somewhere in between. I've spoke to a couple of my wrestlers about keeping a blog for the season. A chance to vent some thoughts, give some insight into what goes on in their head, that brings about what we see on the mat, so I've decided to keep one myself. I'll share some of the moments from my warrior family, as I see them. These will be my thoughts, so as usual sometimes they will make you laugh, like when Eddie paused to think about what he was doing when the Preacher said, "And to use all your Worldly goods..." during the ceremony, sometimes they may make you sad, like when I have to talk about problems or setbacks, like jarred dislocating his knee in practice this week, But hopefully they all will make you think, and give you a little insight into what a great gift it is to be part of the Warrior family. So I'll keep this blog as a modern G.B.U. and I'll sign off with this reminder, If you don't understand or get something in the GBU, it's probably because you weren't there.