Why is there only one ball for
22 players? If you gave a ball to each of them, they'd stop fighting for
it.
~Author Unknown
Something in human nature
causes us to start slacking off at our moment of greatest accomplishment.
As you become successful, you will need a great deal of self-discipline not to
lose your sense of balance, humility, and commitment.
~Ross Perot
 |
| Theo may show his loyalty to Arsene by Commiting to a new contract |
That little statement sparked off
a one hour long discussion...debate...I mean argument focused on Loyalty and Commitment. In my estimation,
I am an ardent and LOYAL Arsenal fan. Why? Because I support no other team…not
that I cannot support another. I could.
Believe me, I have tried and
tried to abandon the Arsenal ship and hop onto another. It just hasn’t worked.
It’s kind of like shifting your left shoe to your right leg and vice versa. It
just is nothing but awkward.
My colleagues on the other hand
reasoned that my loyalty was nothing but BLIND LOYALTY. That did not go well
with me. What do they mean by saying am blinded in my loyalty to being an
Arsenal fan? In their submission, loyalty is two way traffic, in that Arsenal
benefits from me, and I from them.
They argued that a true fan is
subscribed and pays membership fees. They even went ahead and asked me if I had
and Arsenal T-Shirt. I thought that was going way too far!
In my opinion, I thought that
loyalty is emotional…not financial. I thought that the level they were talking
about is more of commitment than loyalty. In my estimation, commitment bodes
more on contracts, membership payments, and things that go beyond the emotional
attachment…kind of like marriage.
I thought I was not married to
Arsenal, but every week they play, I am there supporting them!
Well, needless to say, those guys
at Intelligent Performance were absolutely right. My purported ‘support’ for
Arsenal is blind loyalty (ouch).
In 2013, we would rather be
committed and resolute than just resolve emotionally. Someone said that the New
Year resolutions we make are not enough. Emotions and motivation are not enough
resources to see us through. This is where commitment comes in. In fact, one of
Zig Ziglar’s biggest quotes is “Many
people say that motivation does not last, well so does bathing, and that is why
we recommend it daily”
It is one thing to be totally
inspired at the dawn of the New Year and hurriedly set massive goals…it is yet
another thing to stick with those resolutions till the end of the month to say
the least.
As an individual, I know that my
success in 2013 will be a result of the sum total of every small effort I
expend towards my goals on a consistent and daily basis. That is why as I
write, I have two things that I have put in place that will help me stay
committed.
·
First, I have a timetable of daily activities that I will be engaged in. These
activities support the implementation of the major goals that I have for the
New Year. Such a simple tool to use…and most people I know have used a
timetable before. And sometimes that is why our education systems are blamed,
because we left the discipline of
timetabling at school.
For the most part the closest thing to a time table that
most people look at is the Premiership Standings, to find out where Arsenal
lies. For Liverpool fans its an easy exercise, just start by looking at the
middle of the table going downwards…and Arsenal have been showing the same signs…but
I digress.
This timetable is well thought out. The activities in it
call for nothing but discipline and commitment. I have learnt that if I do
not ‘timetable’ my ‘facebooking’ and
social media activities, it becomes so easy to waste a whole day in there.
The same applies with watching TV…and reading papers. I am
deciding that any TV worth watching must first be preceded by something
motivational, instructional or inspirational.
You can
never under-estimate the power of time-tabling.
·
Secondly, I have in place already a
system that will help me track my
daily activities. It is one thing to have the activities on paper, it is
another to actually do them…and yet another to sit down and review how well I did these activities.
Nothing
is more inspirational than to see on a daily basis my own personal graph of improvement. I can see the patterns. I can know
at what level or percentage I actually ‘lived’ throughout the week. What a
powerful tool!
These
two tools are able to help my commitment to
the goals that I have crafted out for the New Year. One more thing people: get
your heads off that New Year euphoria and start working…Before you figure it
out, January is gone! Before you know it, Kenya is having Elections in March.
Before you know it, we are celebrating Labor Day.
Get
to work NOW. Do not lose a day or a minute…and while you are at it, stay
totally committed to the cause.
Anybody
for an Arsenal Shirt?
No comments:
Post a Comment