As summer is winding down and the school year is underway, your level of commitment will be tested everyday with your actions. Whether it is in the classroom or on the field, your level of commitment will be watched and tested.

As a coach, I have learned that not every athlete is fully committed to the task at hand. This has motivated me to try and figure out why some young athletes would run through a brick wall to reach their goals and others would try to dig or go around.

In my experience, the reason people do not commit completely to their goals is because they are afraid of failure. You see, if you fully commit to a goal there are no excuses. Either you reach your goal or not. If you do set a goal and do not reach it, you have to deal with adversity. On the other hand, if you do not fully commit to your goal then you allow yourself to have excuses to fall back on. Trust me, I have heard them all!

I have watched athletes who were good enough to win state titles not commit to their goals because they were afraid. If they did not win they would not know how to handle it. So instead, they chose to hold back their level of commitment so they could always have excuses. Let me tell you from experience, dealing with adversity is a lot easier than dealing with "what if" for the rest of your life!

Continuing to research and find out what makes people tick, I ran into an awesome book that summed up commitment. In the book The 21 Indispensable Qualities Of A Leader by John C. Maxwell, it talks about commitment. "When it comes to commitment, there are really only four types of people:"

1. Cop-Outs: People who have no goals and do not commit.
2. Hold-Outs: People who do not know if they can reach their goals, so they are afraid to commit.
3. Drop-Outs: People who start toward a goal but quit when the going gets tough.
4. All-Outs: People who set goals, commit to them, and pay the price to reach them.

I took the four types from above and had my athletes read them out loud at practice and then decide which one they where. It was amazing to see how many admitted they were cop-outs, hold-outs and/or drop-outs. We then talked about why. Almost 100% of them admitted the reason they were in those categories was because they feared fully committing to their goal and not reaching it. I still see some of those athletes around and they always tell me how they regret not fully committing and they know they cannot get it back.

This bothers me mostly because I do not like to see people live with regret. It reminds me of something someone once said, "I have never heard a wrestler come back and tell his coach he was worked too hard, but I have heard plenty come back and say they wished they would have worked harder!"

Look at some of the best athletes in the world and you will find the following:

• Willingness to pay the price
• Always striving for perfection
• Never relying on talent alone
• Always doing what is right - even if they do not feel like it

That is commitment. That is the level of commitment that will take you to the top.

You are going to run into bumps and obstacles, but when you hit them head on and defeat them, you will be more successful then if you dodged them completely. I challenge you to set your goals high and fully commit to achieving them. It does no good to have a goal if you are not going to commit to reaching it! Stick with it and you will be amazed at your success!

Until next time, Dream Big ... Work Hard!

Chad Tunink