Identify Distractions and Emilinate Them

All successful people have goals. Specific goals. Realistic goals. Some are big, and some are small. The real Champion will be able to identify which ones are the most important and which ones might be a distraction to reaching the important ones!

One of the stories told up on Steens Mt. long ago was of the best High School girl in the country one year. Her goal was to break every single course record that she ran on that year. This was a huge task, and she had to be at the top of her game every single week. She raced extremely hard each week. Then the last race of the year... the Foot Locker National Championships! She was so burnt out that she tanked it, and ran poorly and did not even come close to winning!

Watch the following video. Ask yourself 'How much more important is three cotton candies vs. just one cotton candy? Is receiving the other two cotton candies worth the extra effort?"

My first week in college, I received a Rubic's Cube. They had just hit the market. I was determined to solve it, but found that this task was occupying too much of my time. So I took the cube and placed it 10 feet above my bed. That happened to be in the room above me. I was friends with the girls in that room and I made them promise not to give it back to me until I was caught up on my assignments on the weekend. I had to eliminate the distraction, get it out of my sight, in order to complete the important tasks at hand.

Today we look at distractions...Setting every course record was a distraction for the best goal of winning the national championship and setting the record there! The current cotton candy was a distraction for the future ones. My Rubic's Cude was a distraction for something I had to do that week, when I could solve it later. Notice that some of the kids resorted to distractions to distract themselves from the distractions! Some times you need to run and hide from your distractions!

A parallel concept we teach in Panther XC is "Deferred Gratification." That is the benefit of the interest on your PAWZ each month that you do not spend. Champions are disciplined, and one of my favorite quotes on discipline regarding sacrificing the present for the sake of the future is as follows: 'Discipline is just choosing between what you want now and what you want most!'