You've Got To Want It Bad Enough

by Dessa Rodeffer
Quill Editor/Publisher

24 February 1999

The Southern 8th grade boys basketball team are enjoying the high of a state championship title. They have been relishing in the pleasures that come from being champions.

It also brings extreme pleasure to those who have sacrificed to help them succeed.

Southern's point guard Danny Morrison was watching the high school Rebels practicing ball Monday night when I asked him if he was ready for high school.

He sat there with his arms on his knees, and had a far-off look that made me feel he was several flights up on an emotional level I had never been. He turned and said, "No, I'm not ready for high school."

Danny said that he had prepared for a state championship win beginning around 4th grade. They traveled to camps and "our dads coached us," he said. "We wanted to play in a state championship so bad then that we didn't want to wait until 7th grade."

Starting early in making important decisions in your life is a key to success. And, of course, having good coaching and encouragement is also very important.

But kids can not excel to championship levels on their parents and coaches dreams alone. It takes good physical, mental, and emotional characteristics to reach the top, and that comes from wanting it bad enough yourself.

The book "Getting High" by an excellent football player and outstanding motivational speaker describes reasons why we can't always do what we want to.

According to its author, Dan Clark, we are all born to succeed.

He said we must first, take account of our strengths and focus on them. We need to take mental snapshots of things we have accomplished and continually review them to build confidence.

Too many times we dwell on our failures, and then we start feeling like one.

If you've been successful at something once, you can always do it again.

Clark said the four reasons we are not always able to do it is:

1. I was afraid to try for fear of failure

2. I didn't know exactly what it was I wanted to do.

3. I didn't want to do it badly enough.

4. I didn't believe I really could do it.

#1 Overcome fear: Clark reminds us we all fell the first time we walked, we almost drown the first time we swam, we missed the ball the first time we swung the bat.

Babe Ruth, known for his 714 home runs, struck out 1,330 times.

He quoted Robert Schuller: "It's better to attempt something great and fail than to attempt nothing at all and succeed."

#2 Know What You Want. Clark encourages us to get over the fact that you don't know what you want to do. "The sooner you know where you're going, the faster you'll be able to get there."

The rest he says is like a golf game, you tee off and take it one stroke at a time. Before you know it, you've finished the course. He warns young people that you must make important decisions in your life at a young age.

You are already making important social and moral decisions about your friends, your health habits, your religion, alcohol, drugs, sex.

Many have become felons at thirteen, bona fide alcoholics at fourteen, hard drug addicts at fifteen, pregnant with illegitimate children by sixteen because they hadn't stopped to decide where they want to go so they just float.

Important decisions must be made at a young age, or you may not like where you end up.

#3 Want it badly.

Clark told of a young man who asked Aristotle , the great philosopher, to give him all the knowledge and learning he possessed. Aristotle first wanted to take him by the river. He threw a stone in and asked the lad to get it.

When the lad leaned down, Aristotle grabbed him and held his head under the water until the lad was fighting badly for his life.

The boy asked why he did that. His reply, "I will give you and teach you all I know, but it will do you no good unless you want it as much as you wanted air to breathe."

#4 Believe in yourself.

How many times have you heard the words, "You can't do it?" I know I have heard it and then even failed to attempt a task which I thought I was good at, because I began to doubt myself.

On the other hand, it is hard to stop someone from succeeding that has the conviction that they are winners.

Your attitude is a positive or negative feeling that causes a like action and a like result. We acquire these attitudes by thinking or doing things over and over. We become what we think we are.

There is a tremendous power that comes from within each of us. We can let it idle, wait until someone else comes along and gives us a push, or we can shut down completely. But, if we really want to succeed, as the 8th grade team did with their state championship title, we have to engage into action for ourselves, and use the power we each possess.

We must overcome the fear of failure. We must determine where we want to go. We must cultivate a strong desire to succeed as much as we want to breathe.

And most importantly, we must maintain a positive mental attitude through all the trials, set-backs, and comments others will so freely give us.

The eighth graders set their goals. They knew where they wanted to go. They wanted it badly and they thought of themselves as winners.

It's not about being cocky, but about being confident in their abilities to give it everything they had to reach them. And reach them they did.