To Become a Champion

What does it take to become a champion?  

First you need to be making a championship effort.

Then you’ll need two additional things: 

1. Championship level coaching
2. Championship level competition.  

Championship Level Competition. 
Until you get into top level competition you'll never find out exactly where you are in your development.  

When you compete at the highest level you either win or lose. When you are on your way up and compete at the championship level, you're a winner regardless of how the match or game turns out because even if you lose you're going to learn. 

You’re going to win knowledge of what additionally you need to do, what skill you need to develop, where your areas of weakness are that will allow you to move up and when it comes. 

Championship Level Coaching
On the other hand, when it comes to making those changes you'll need coaching from somebody who has been there, coached and preferably competed. You don’t want to waste your time training under someone who really has no first hand knowledge of what it takes. That would be a blind leading the blind situation and you don’t have time for that.

The experience of coaching and/or competing at the highest levels gives a coach the experience to show you the secrets that only the champions know. Winning is getting a specific thing done in a specific time period and doing it better than anyone else at that moment.  

Winning involves making lots of things happen. A winning performance involves making lots of critical things happen at the right time. At this level you don't learn how to be a champion out of a book.  

The Road to Becoming a Champion: You learn and develop into a champion from combining your own Championship Level Effort with the benefits that only come from Championship Coaches and Championship Competition.

A Slump is Coming

Most first time Winners are so naïve.

They are so happy! They think their lives have changed forever. They think now that they have broken through, winning is going to become a way of life. Unfortunately they are headed into some troubled waters and most don’t see it coming.

As a result, they don’t know how to steer around them.

Here’s what they don’t see coming…

What goes up will come down—UNLESS you keep it from happening. Think Superbowl champs, World Series Winners, Oscar winners.

How many of them repeat?

That’s one thing that makes Lance Armstrong winning the Tour de France 7 times so astounding! It's the thing that made Michael Jordan’s 6 Championships with the Chicago Bulls so amazing. And it’s also why Tiger Woods domination of professional golf captured the imagination of people who weren’t even golf fans.

It seems as if there is a huge gravitational pull that life puts on Champions pulling them back to the mediocre masses. Those that stay on top are the ones who go beyond talent and are driven enough to continue to pay the price required to Win.

Their drive elevates them. That kind of passion is very rare.

So if once is not enough for you and you want to keep on doing Great things, just be aware…

If you get a promotion
If you set a record
If you win a contest
If you have a great month

What probably is heading your way is a great big, unexpected SLUMP.

So act accordingly.  If you don’t want that to happen, do EVERYTHING in your power to keep it from happening, otherwise it will surely come. It may happen anyway in spite of your best efforts but if it does you will be able to turn things around a whole lot quicker.

Also your extra efforts will serve to tremendously limit how deep it the fall-off would have otherwise been.

The slump happens for a lot of reasons.

You assume you have things working and they will keep working just as well or even better. You forget the intensity that you put into your efforts to win the first time. You imagine and expect that all you have to do is keep on doing the same things and you will continue to grow even higher. You don’t plan for the unforeseen and inevitable new obstacles that always come up.

So Congratulations on your Win! But if you want it do it again, stay sharp and steer away from the slump that otherwise is certainly headed your way!

Grow or Die

We live life on a slope. You either push forward or slide back. Things don’t stay the same.

They either get better or worse. There is no such thing as living in neutral.  Life always takes effort. If at any point you stop making the effort, your life will completely unravel. In fact things definitely will get stale and lose their luster if efforts aren’t made to keep them fresh and exciting.

It's worth thinking about because If you aren’t improving you’re declining. Declining is another word for Losing and that is never fun. Any thing can get stale. Any person can get stale, bored. Any relationship can get stale. Any company can get stale. Any country can get stale.

Everything and everybody has pressure.
We are all in the same boat. This is something everything that lives has to confront. It’s why companies come out with new everything. They don’t want to become old news and they know even their product lines will get stale if they don’t come out with new models.

New and improved cars computers, furniture, boats, motorcycles, household appliances, security systems, golf clubs, gold balls, tennis rackets, skiis, clothing, and on and on. Everything that wants to continue to be and doesn’t want to disappear has to become newer and better.

To Live is to Grow

We all have to decide what we want in our lives. There are big benefits for those who focus on ways to keep the key areas of their life fresh, fun and exciting. Those among us who stay fresh and energized by continuing to grow will be the ones squeezing the most fun and fulfillment out of life.

The great news is that this is something that can be a way of life for all, regardless of background, finances, or age. That can be you, that can be me.

Make Sure It's Worth It

You'll never get it off the ground unless you believe it's worth working for.Before you do anything, make sure its worth it.

Because if it's worth doing, it's worth doing right. When you do things right it takes extra effort. It’s effort you don’t mind making because you have decided it's worth it.

But if you aren’t sure, you’ll cut corners. You’ll do it in a half-hearted way. You’ll waste your time. And as a result you’ll surely fail.

Keep this in mind:

Everyone underestimates how hard it is to do something new. Everytime you price what a new project, house or business is going to cost, you underestimate. Everytime you estimate how long a project will take, you underestimate. So realize, in spite of your best efforts, anything you decide to do is going to take much more effort and money than you think.

In fact, when you start something you don’t how long or how much it will cost to wrap the thing up. One thing you don’t want to do is get half way through and stop.

So before you start…make sure it's worth it, or you’ll just waste money and time, and be left with a sour taste in your mouth.

Kids, meet your competition

“Everyone from junior high students to Olympians runs faster when there is someone in the lane next to them.”
—Jeff Castolene

Value is established by comparison.

If you want to know how valuable something is, you compare it to something else. If you say this is GREAT, how do you know? Only by comparing it to something else!

This is not just true of products and services—it's true of people as well.

As we raise our children, we encourage them in everything they do, we want them to feel good about themselves. But as they grow up they need to realize that just because Mommy or Daddy said they are a great artist or athlete that doesn’t necessarily mean they are.

One of the best ways to help them realize that is through competition. That gives them the chance to find out for themselves how good they are.

“Competition is not always nice, but it's necessary." —Art Williams

Competition teaches you about making your best efforts, it teaches you about pushing yourself. It lets you find out how good you really are by introducing you to challenges and stresses. It helps you grow by showing you how to work with others to get things done.

It lets you taste the rewards of Winning and the sting of disappointing defeats.

There is nothing like competition to prepare kids for the realities of the real world.

Even Lance Armstrong Had a Gut Check

GETTING HIMSELF MENTALLY READY FOR HIS COMEBACK IN THE TOUR DE FRANCE AFTER A 4 YEAR LAYOFF...

"When I started my comeback, in all the early races I was tentative, hesitant—that was the reason for the crash—broke my collarbone. I had thoughts of using this as a reason to quit, wondering, do I really want to do this? Word of this reached the Team director, he called and made one call, said, "ARE YOU NUTS, YOU ARE NOT QUITTING! YOU'VE COME TOO FAR!" After that call, that was it, I went all in—whatever it took." —Lance Armstrong

He had spent a year getting himself physically ready for the comeback, but the mental commitment was another thing entirely. Until he got that past the issue of whether or not he was ready to give it everything he had, he wouldn't be ready.

Now we know the result.

He finished an amazing third in the 21 day race against 200 of the top elite professional road racers in the world—almost all of them 5-12 years younger than he is.

You'll never put forth the effort required to be the best unless you commit totally. It's impossible to push yourself to the maximum effort required unless you want it bad enough to go all in. Even Lance. Even a 7 time Champion.