SUCCESS

Success can be measured in as many styles and stages as there are people, and then some, but the ingredients to being or becoming successful are all similar: Hard Work, Confidence, The Pursuit of Clear Goals, Continued Pursuit, Positive Attitude, Overcoming Setbacks, Good Habits, Focused Effort. These things are in everyone's books on building success. Hard work builds confidence and self esteem. Self esteem gives you a strong positive attitude. The other ingredients all relate to how you work and how you approach that work.

Overcoming setbacks is something that everyone must learn. Those that are most successful are the ones that return to the pursuit of their goals as quickly as possible, whether these are new goals or old goals unfulfilled. Each of us will have some setbacks along the way. Each of us must decide what the next step is after these setbacks. Good habits make these decisions easier.

Hard work and continued pursuit of your goals is an ongoing process. You should want to try to get better. You should want to be at practice if your goal is to improve. You should be trying to do things that you have never been able to do before at practice. If you can achieve success repeatedly, then you try to transfer that to doing it in a racing situation. If success is trying to hold a certain pace and your efforts at practice are to that end, then success is holding that pace for the whole set - that is your goal. Transferring that to holding that pace in a race situation is a different goal.

You should want to test yourself at the meets to see if all that you do is paying off. Competition is to compete with oneself. You try to race the person next to you, but winning isn't everything, TRYING to win is. Making the other person beat you by going faster than you have ever gone before is winning. Success is measured against those things that you have made an active attempt at changing or doing. If you are working on changing your stroke, then success is to race successfully from start to finish with the new stroke technique. If you are learning a new racing strategy, then implementing that strategy is a success story.

There are many stages and steps that lead to different successes. If you seem stuck in one area, look to improve or challenge yourself in another. Remember that the outcome is often decided by many factors. Break these factors down and see if you are successfully completing your own varied goals. Many times we forget that getting there is half the battle; the other half starts when you get there. So plan your attack carefully and make your own luck. And good luck in your attack.