(Inspired by the book Zero Regrets by Apolo Ohno, eight-time Olympic medalist.)
Do you know who you are? Do you know who you want to
be? How are you going to get where you want to go? These are just some of the
questions that are covered in a career studies course in high schools all over,
but they are not easy questions to answer. Why? That’s what we’re here to find
out.
Perhaps we can discover part of the answer
by looking at Apolo Ohno’s life as a young man and developing athlete to see
what he did to become one of the greatest Olympic champions ever. It was not easy.
His achievements were certainly not something that he just “lucked out” on. There
was a lot of planning and thinking and dreaming and believing, not to mention
an incredible training regimen he had to follow. People like Apolo don’t become
Olympic champions without a lot of time, effort and pain. So who is Apolo Ohno,
anyway? Why did he write Zero Regrets?
How can his story help young people who are trying to find their own successes
in this complex world?
Apolo Ohno is the most decorated American
Winter Olympic athlete of all time, having won eight medals for short-track
speed skating. Twelve-time holder of the men’s national speed skating title, he
currently lives in Salt Lake City ,
Utah
We all only have one life to live. What if
today were to be the very last day of your life? What would you want to be
remembered for the most: How hard you trained to be the best? That you had a
dream and a vision and you chased your dream with everything you had in you? That
the dream meant suffering pain and hardship at times? Yet you kept saying to
yourself, “Zero Regrets” because you
never wanted to feel that you had not given your chosen pursuit your best
effort, each and every day of your life.
The same thing can be said for many
different pursuits, not just sports. For example, I have been pursuing a
writing career for several years now; it took more than seven years just to get
my first book published. Since that time (March 2011), I’ve decided to make
writing my career. Of course I am still a teacher; that career has been very
rewarding to me and still is. But what I’m saying now is that if I want to achieve
greatness in the fictional writing realm, I have to be able to take my writing
to the next level.
I not only published my first book ever, I
also had it widely publicized all over Canada
and the United States
To this end, my young niece (I’ll call her Erin ) has the academic qualification of a master’s of
English literature and has agreed to help me with my future writing. I need to
improve my writing, just as a teacher needs to improve her teaching, and an
athlete, like Apolo Ohno, needs to improve his skill level as well as his
physical and mental conditioning for world-level competition. Without that
consistent effort to improve performance, the best level anyone would probably
ever achieve is mediocrity, but that is not good enough for me as a writer or a
teacher, and it would definitely never satisfy Apolo Ohno in his pursuit of
greatness in the short-track speed skating realm.
I aim to be a world competitor in my
writing. For example, I would love to make it to the New York Times best-seller list at some point. I did fairly well in
my three English courses at the University of Toronto and even better later at
Seneca College, where I completed five English courses, each with an excellent
grade. I was proud of having achieved this, but it was only the beginning. What
it did was set the stage for later achievements in developing both my teaching
and writing careers.
You might be wondering how I can do both
careers at the same time. It’s not easy, but having taught for more than 13
years full time, I now feel fairly comfortable in my specialized field (computer
science) and at the same time have developed competence in other subject areas
too (namely computer technology, business technology and career studies). Because
I love to teach, I will gladly work hard at improving my teaching skills for as
long as I am an active teacher. All I know is that if you want something badly
enough, you have to put at least 100
percent into it. You have to be very clear about what it is you have to do and
then do it with everything you’ve got.
Never say die. Quitting is not an option.
Real victory is arriving at the finish line
with no regrets. You go all out. And then you accept the consequences.
That’s what makes a champion—in sports, in
business, in life and in your relationships with your family and friends. You
go all out—with heart, with excitement and enthusiasm and, most of all, with
soul.copyright - Anne Shier, 2013, all rights reserved, published by Authorhouse, Bloomington, Indiana, USA
[1] Back inside cover of the book, “Zero
Regrets”, by Apolo Ohno, published by Atria Books, New York, NY 10020,
copyright by Podium AAO, Inc. by Atria Books, New York, NY 10020, © by Podium
AAO, Inc.
No comments:
Post a Comment