Champions

After a very awkward week, I was thrilled to rally a cheering squad to the Kenya Swimming Federation National Championships which was held over the weekend! Our agenda was to go give a standing ovation to our very own cousin who makes the rest of us look bad in any pool!!

Am sure you can imagine the magnitude of this event! These are the crème of all swimmers in the country from various age-groups who have been training for different courses. Seating with my squadron in the bleachers I couldn’t help but wonder how much time, effort, energy, costs and much more have been invested in each of these swimmers.

It may have been a lot of work pampering our dear water baby and ensuring he is well hydrated with orange water (apparently all these serious swimmers drink this stuff!)and is well fed and warm. However the hard-work was left solely on his shoulders. I know for a fact that he swims nearly every day for at least two hours, eats a very healthy diet and works out! This calls for a great deal of discipline, commitment and focus! The results as you can rightfully visualize are almost quite obvious! Now, when you think of GIGO (a computer acronym for Garbage in Garbage out) you understand that you are what you do often and what you do is pretty much what you get! That said it is still very startling that with this knowledge we still expect to be champions in our own right in whatever we fancy without working at it! It is very strange that on our wish list they are a zillion goals we have set but we have not taken any initiative to realize any one of these goals!

Thinking of all the swimmers over the weekend, regardless of their age or what course they were pursuing; they have all made sacrifices to make it to the nationals. They have had to sacrifice some leisure and rest to get adequate training. They may have had to let go of some friends who do not share in their visions. They have coaches who train them and family and friends who cheer them even when they would rather give up! Come the hour of reckoning, they have to stand on the board and go the mile alone. The rest of the spectators can now only watch and applaud them on.

Thinking about it, this is how life really is, a race which you decide to take at your own pace. You may have a great team rallying behind you and giving you all the support and encouragement you need along the way. Many a times, you will get boo-ers who will try to dampen you spirit and make you believe you are not worthy, or that you can’t succeed! However, you must have a goal and must train to achieve it.You must have the discipline, focus and zeal it entails. Like the swimmers you have to keep pushing yourself, not making an excuse because it would be easier too and keep working on bettering yourself. Like the coaches who rush to the swimmers side at the end of each race informing them of the time they accomplished and giving them a pat on the back, we all need to have mentors, coaches and role models who believe in our potential, share our values and beliefs and can help us along the way!

But most of all as a true champion, we must all accept that we are better at something’s and others are undeniably better at other things. We therefore need to display good sportsmanship and congratulate others for their accomplishments and be genuinely happy for them! Shake their hands and wish them well. This must be harder for some people more than others but we must always remember the words of ‘desiderata’: those who are green with envy over others success are vexatious to the spirit!

So our water baby did us very proud over the weekend, hopefully we might send him to the Olympics very soon. This weekend I re-learnt from him the importance of setting realistic goals and put my all into actually realizing them! So maybe I need to get up earlier, cut down on the sugar and get those books cracking!!!!!

I might want to ask what goals do you have on your to-do list? And what are you REALLY doing about them? It’s one thing to have it on paper and a whole different story when you put action to them!