Decide. Plan. Commit. Achieve

You have the ability to achieve anything you want in life... if you take the appropriate steps. Imagine the ?rst person who watched birds soaring in the sky and wished that humans had been given that incredible gift. What an impossible feat this must have appeared to be, but while you are reading this, hundreds of thousands of people are ?ying in airplanes all over the world. We can ?y!

Have you ever stopped to look around at all the amazing inventions that are used commonly in everyday life. You will ?nd countless achievements that at one time seemed impossible. Fewer than 100 years ago, you would have used a horse and buggy to get to your martial arts lessons!!

Achievements are not limited to world changing events. Achievements can be minor, such as losing a couple of pounds, or major, as in obtaining your black belt. What is important is that you understand that any achievement starts with a Decision, a Plan, and a Commitment (DPC).

Not everyone who enrolls in a martial arts program earns a black belt. Why? At some point in their training, an aspect of the DPC fell apart.

The Decision Making the decision to achieve what you want is the most important step in the achievement process. The decision creates a goal. Goal setting experts believe that if you set goals, you are already half way to achieving them. How do you learn to become a good decision maker? The more decisions you make, the better decision maker you will become. Adults are faced with many daily decision-making opportunities at home or in the office, but in reality, they may not make the ultimate decision. The actual choice may be left to the more aggressive employee or spouse.

Children can develop good decision making skills by being encouraged to make small decisions in order to become more experienced. Parents can help their children become better decision makers by allowing them to take part in household choices. For example, you might want to have your child choose the dinner menu once per week. At our school, parents play an integral role in helping our staff to keep children active and consistent with their training. Children don’t always have enough experience to know what the best decision is long term.

The Plan

Once a decision is made, you must seek out the information and knowledge to make your decision achievable. The Wright brothers researched and studied everything that was known about ?ying. Why had others failed? They studied their own ?ying attempts and continued to devise new plans until....

The plan is the action or actions that you think you need to take to make your goal a reality. These actions are resolutions within yourself. For those of you establishing year 2000 resolutions, be careful not to confuse your goal with your resolution. If your goal is to achieve high grades in school, then your resolution should be to develop habits that will increase your chances to succeed.

Habits such as “I will study an extra half hour a day,” “ I will always complete my homework” or “I will avoid absences whenever possible” are your resolutions or your plans of action. Many students incorrectly make their resolution “achieve high grades” but never establish a plan. The confusion between goals and resolutions results in a high rate of resolution failure. Develop your plan of action on paper. Research shows that goals written on paper have a higher success rate than those only verbally expressed. Your plan of action will become your blueprint that you can refer to over and over again.

The Commitment Now that you have made a decision to attain a goal and have planned a course of action to achieve it, the ?nal step is to make a commitment to follow through. The most important fact to remember about commitment is that it means not quitting. Although set- ting goals and constructing a plan are important, they are relatively easy to do. When you make a commitment to follow through it means that you will not be compromised by external (environment) or internal (self-con?dence) obstacles...even failure. The Wright brothers did not succeed with their ?rst plan for ?ight, but they were deeply committed to their decision to ? y.

If you have made the decision to become a black belt in our school, ask yourself if you are doing what is necessary to achieve this goal. We want you to have a solid plan that you can commit to, so that your goal can be realized. For children to reach their goals, parents need to help ensure that their children have the means to stick to their plan, and make the commitment as well. But equally important, don’t let obstacles stand in the way of potential success. If you need help or wish to discuss your progress, please take action and see our staff. When it comes to our students, we are as committed as the Wright brothers to seeing all our students soar!