THE MOMENT OF TRUTH

The 5th Key to Beating Big Shots is Commitment

Commitment gives you Confidence! Tiger Woods said that confidence was the big advantage he always had that allowed him to stay strong, focused at the tough moments.

It led to fantastic finishes on Sunday. It led to draw dropping putts and towering precision iron shots to win tournaments that were hanging in the balance. It led to total dominance for years in golf.

Commitment means you are all in

• It means you’ll start strong with total focus
• It means you’ll build intensity as the match goes on.
• It means you’ll fight until the final bell
• It means you won’t relax if you get ahead
• It means you’ll leave it all on the field
• It means you won’t be thinking about anything else until you’re finished
• It means your team and coaches can count on you to be your best

It means that if you ever get beat you’ll have a burning desire to come back next time with more fire and power and give the other team the beating…just like Alabama did to LSU in the NCAA College Football Championship this year.

It’s the last thing you find out about a player or team…Will they quit or not?
Many times, at the highest levels, this is where the game is won…in the very last seconds of the game. Who will flinch?

Teams can be equal all the way to the end..and then.. which one will have that last ounce of commitment.

The intensity in the stands builds as the climax of the game approaches. Here’s where we find out. This is the moment where it will come out. 

• Who is tougher? 
• Who want’s it more? 
• Who will stretch a little more? 

They are both exhausted so which one will reach down for that last effort, that last burst, that last surge that will put them in front? You that out right at the end. 

You find out about your “commitment” at the Moment of Truth
That’s when the team finds out about themselves. Everyone thinks they are committed. Everyone thinks they have what it takes. But until you play the game you don’t really know. It doesn’t necessarily mean you won.

You can be totally commited and lose, but you’ll have no regrets. You’ll know that you gave it everything you had. You won’t be happy about losing but you’ll be proud of your effort. You won’t be hanging your head.

You can really see it in boxing
It’s what makes boxing so fascinating to watch because you can see this play out right in front of you. You can see it also in individual sports like tennis or golf but boxing is different…they are beating on each other. They are exhausted, they may have been fighting for 15 rounds and time is running out. 

They may have been knocked down. Every part of their face and upper body has been pounded and pounded. Their bodies are screaming in exhaustion, begging for relief yet the boxer puts all that out of his mind and stays focused and on the attack right down to the final bell. 

• You can see it in his eyes.
• You can see it in his posture. 
• You can see it in what he does

At that moment commitment is not just a word, it’s real and there for everyone to see. 

FACE THE PAIN

The 2nd Key to Beating Big Shots is Conditioning

Here’s where you find out if you are just a big talker or are serious. This is where coaches find out if their team has what it take to be champions. In the conditioning process you find out how deep their desire is…are they just talkers or do they really have what it takes because here is where you really start to earn it.

If you cut corners here, you won’t have a chance. You won’t be able to keep up. It will be obvious to you and everyone else.

If you are physically weaker, you won’t be as mentally sharp either. You’ll find yourself making mistakes you never made before.

Pay the price of pain to get the gain
To reach peak conditioning you have to push yourself. You have to drive past previous barriers and do it over and over again. A couple of trips to the gym is not going to make you look like an Olympic athlete.

Michael Phelps won 8 Gold Medals swimming at the China Olympics. How did that happen? Well, for starters the years of hitting the pool with his coach at 5 am in the morning, doing drills, practicing each and every aspect of swimming for hours and hours EVERY day, 7 days a week might have a little to do with it. Want to beat Michael Phelps, son? See you at the pool at 5 am.

No shortcuts to developing critical skills
Elite fitness is available for whoever will pay the price. It doesn’t matter if someone has more athletic talent than you, if they won’t pay the price to get fit, they are going to get beat. 

It’s not just conditioning. It’s developing all the specific skills and techniques required in each sport. You may have been born with incredible talent but it won’t do you any good until it’s developed and refined into championship level skill. 

No one falls out of the crib being able to shoot a basketball like Michael Jordan or swing a golf club like Tiger Woods.

Remember this…to become Great, NO ONE ESCAPES THE REPETITIONS.
By the time Tiger Woods won the Masters at age 21 he had been playing golf almost every day for 19 years. That was because at age 2 he had learned how to call his dad at work and ask if they could go to the driving range after he got off work.

So how can you ever catch and beat them?
It’s because things change in the world…nothing stays the same and opportunities always pop up to win if you are ready.

• People get older—Arnold Schwarzenegger, once "Conan the Barbarian," doesn’t look so good in a bathing suit anymore
• They have injuries and surguries—Notice how Tiger Woods doesn’t have the same swagger after multiple knee operations?
• Success softens them—Almost NO team repeats after winning a college or professional sports championship.
• Life happens to them, changing their priorities—They marry, have kids, get interested in other things

Conditioning can give you the edge you need to win
If you are in better shape you’ll have the best chance to get the most out of your ability. You don't want to be running out of energy at the end of the game because the more energy you have, the clearer you'll be thinking at the critical times...also you’ll be more confident.

If on the other hand you show up and immediately see your competition is in dramatically better shape than you, you are beat before you start.

Paying the conditioning price is where you can leave most of your competition behind.

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Part 4 of 5 KEYS TO BEAT THE BIG SHOTS

Part 1:
You Can Beat The Big Shots

Part 2:
John Wooden and Shoelaces 

Part 3:
Get READY, Get SET

Notice Tiger Woods Coming Back?

He’s baaaaaaack!

Tiger Woods is climbing the charts again. Did you pay attention to what happened this past weekend in Australia at the PGA tour?

Greg Chambers won the The Emirates Australian Open Championship.  Finishing second was John Senden. Did you notice who finished third? Tiger Woods! He actually led the tournament for the first 2 days despite the fact that he is usually a slow starter.  ...And the next week he delivered the clinching point in the 2011 President's Cup in Melbourne, Australia by winning his singles match 4-3 over Aaron Baddelely.

It looks like Tiger’s golf game is coming back.
NO surprise to me. Soon after his disaster he started playing golf again. Pretty soon, he had fallen off the charts.

In some of the rankings he had fallen down to the 150^th player in the categories of putting and driving. At the time when people were jumping on him the worst I told my nephew, who is a mini tour player, Tiger would be back because “He’s meaner than the other guys/.”

To me, Tiger is a guy who wants it more.
It’s not that he’s better and more talented. He has developed himself more than everyone. The criticism hits him deeper. It’s not the criticism that brings him down, he just despises it. It’s not that he can’t take it, he doesn’t want to take it because he knows he doesn’t have to.  

He’s a born winner.
There’s a saying that winners win and losers lose. When you make a big blunder of course you’ve got to accept responsibility and spend some quiet time with your maker and the people involved to work things out the best you can.

But, at some point, you’ve got to work things out and get back to what you do.

No Such Thing As A Secret

This says it all: "Three can keep a secret, if two of them are dead." —Benjamin FranklinThere is no such thing as a secret. That’s the best attitude to have. Obviously a lot of people get away with hiding a lot of things but it's very risky.

It's hard to keep a secret.

Have you ever heard of the concept of “ if something can go wrong it will”? Also that when it goes wrong “it will go wrong at the worst possible time.”

You don’t need that hanging over your head. It's going to be impossible for you to continue to play at your best knowing there are things that could come to light at any time that could instantly turn your life into a nightmare.

One problem comes…
...when you get away with it for a while and then you think you are safe. You think you are above the law. Then you get sloppy. It's only a matter of time before the explosion comes. And once the toothpaste starts to pour out of the tube, it's not going back in.

Tiger Woods thought he was getting away with it. Enron executives thought they were getting away with it. NY Governor Elliot Spitzer though he was getting away with it. When the explosion came it was disastrous and totally destroyed all the positives of a lifetime that they had built up.

Another problem is…
...when the secret starts to come out it's so tempting to make desperate attempts to cover it up. These efforts almost never work and make the situation exponentially worse than they would have been if the mistakes had just been honestly acknowledged.

Isn’t it always said, as they lead people off to jail, that the actions that started the problem weren’t really the problem, it was the things done to “cover up” that ultimately got the offenders into real trouble.
So what is the best policy?

Always assume as you go through life that…THERE IS NO SUCH THING AS A SECRET.

your list should get bigger

Taylor Swift is a successful young musician.

She was listed in People magazine’s November 1, 2010 edition as being #12 on Forbes Celebrity Power list. She is the youngest ever to win the  Country Music Association’s Entertainer of the Year. She earns an estimated $45 million per year. This has given her an extraordinary life and she has experienced a lifetime’s worth of adventures.

In a short period of time, she has traveled the world, she has met and gotten to know celebrities and famous people of all kinds. Top politicians, the United States president, and giants of Wall Street have all crossed her path.

So after all of this, what has Ms. Taylor discovered about what matters in life? She has a unique vantage point and her impressions are worth listening to. So what does she think?

“I think sometimes as people gain success the list of things that makes them happy gets smaller,” she explains, “but i think your list should get bigger.”

Wise words! It seems Ms. Taylor is mature beyond her years.

She makes such a good point. Instead of experiencing joy from a wider and wider range of experiences as we go through life its easy to become jaded and bored, unsatisfied and looking for bigger and bigger thrills.

Want to really enjoy the life you lead? A good starting point is being grateful for and taking pleasure from the seemingly little things of everyday life.

That’s a lesson you can learn at any stage of your life, but the sooner the better.

Even a former #1 golfer has learned this lesson recently. As Tiger Woods now says, "I’ve found you don’t have to win championships to be happy. For example, I’ve learned that some of the most fun times I have are giving my son Charlie a bath.""

Progress. Taylor Swift would be glad.