Lessons from a high school cross country team, Part 2

Yesterday I introduced you to 7 strong, determined young men who had the dream of winning the Indiana Cross Country State Championship. They trained hard, believed in themselves and each other. They had a common goal they visualized every day, and at the end of the season, they stood on stage as state champs!

Their vision became reality! The physical effort these boys put forth was amazing. But the edge they brought with them was that they saw it happen before the season even started!

These 7 runners – who on paper were not a championship team - made me a believer in visualizing your way to success. Of course, just seeing it won’t make it happen. What it will do is allow you to work toward your goal with a belief that it will happen. Once you allow yourself to see it, you will begin to believe it. See your success and each step you need to take along the way to reach your goal. This is what allows one person to become a success while others sit back and wonder why life dealt them a bad hand.

The same is true in the business world. Our business associates, fellow networkers and power team members help us see what we can be and help us get there. We are each other’s cheerleaders, mentors, teammates. Without support, without others keeping us at the top of our game, we will not have the success we want. We, like the cross country team, hold each other to a higher standard. Your teammates’ successes are your successes, and yours are theirs.

Success is not a sprint. Achieving goals is more like a cross country meet – a long run, one step at a time, with obstacles, ups and downs, people getting in your way, maybe even pushing you off course, and in the end, it’s you – alone – crossing that finish line. You’re exhausted, but jubilant with arms in the air. And you know that your team helped you get there. You take a moment to celebrate the victory, and then you’re off again, ready to start visualizing your next goal and seeing your next success.

The cross country team did that. They decided that one blue ribbon was not enough. So they immediately began their new vision, their new goal of back-to-back state championships. They worked through the pain, and knew it was worth the effort. They found strength in visualization because they knew that it worked. They gave themselves permission to believe! Stay the course. See it - believe it - achieve it.