Are you a Winner or a Quitter?

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The following article I wrote for a group of high school kids in year 12 about to finish school. While it may not be applicable to your current circumstance, the underlying message still holds true for anyone and everyone. Enjoy!

Have you ever run a 100 meter sprint and just been pipped at the line to come second by the slimmest of margins? Or maybe you’ve been sprinting downfield to score a try only to be tackled 1 meter short? If you can relate to any of these two scenario’s then you’ll also recall to how gutted you were when it happened.

Do you also remember the feeling of failure quickly disappearing when you suddenly realized that you’d given everything you had and that you never ever gave up? You may not have won the race or scored the try, but at least you finished and didn’t just quit.

As in sport, life is simply a series of short races, from one goal to another and you simply try as hard as you can to do the best that you can no matter what the area, in order to succeed. From when you first walked, to when you started primary school, to starting high school. As some of you now contemplate life outside of high school, another race in your life’s journey is about to end, with another about to begin.

Some of you will head off to University, some to TAFE, some will get jobs and apprenticeships and a small percentage of you will be offered professional contracts to become part of an elite sporting organization. That is the beginning of your next race.

My question to you is, HOW DO YOU WANT TO FINISH THIS RACE? DO YOU WANT TO FINISH IT AT ALL?

When I was 17 years old my whole world revolved around rugby. At the end of my year 11 year, I conned my parents into letting me go back to school one last year. My parents wanted me to leave school and get a job. You see, I was at an elite boarding school where the fees were equivalent to 1/3 of their yearly income. Eventually they relented and I was allowed back to school for year 12. I had one goal; make the New Zealand Secondary Schools rugby team. School work for me was secondary. I attended classes just so I could play rugby.

Anyway, cutting a long story short, midway through the year, the New Zealand Secondary’s Schools 1^st XV team was selected to play Australia in a one off test and I missed selection. I was gutted!! My whole purpose in life (at that time) had been snatched away from me and I was devastated. One of my rugby coaches dragged me to one side one day and said these following gut wrenching words, “RAE, you missed out because your form wasn’t good enough. Your form isn’t good enough because your school work is rubbish. Lift your work rate in the class room you’ll find your work rate on the field will rise with it”.

So I did just that. I knuckled down, hit the books and slowly my grades started to rise. Then around August, another New Zealand Secondary’s School Rugby Team was announced. Not to play a one off test, but to go on the trip of a life time. 2 months travelling through England, Ireland, Scotland, Wales and Holland playing 5 tests against those countries as well as other games. This time I was selected and I was ecstatic. After being told of my selection, that same teacher sat me down and told me what had happened. My form on the field had improved. Not because I was training harder than before, but because my character had grown. In his words, “I had Grown Up!”

You see, when I gave up the school work to focus all my attention on my rugby, I’d basically, “quit!” He compared my schooling to a 130 metre sprint. 10 metres for every year of school. I was way out in front, 120 metres down and only 10 metres to go. I was in the last stretch, with the finish line in reach and I simply gave up. I stopped running. I quit!!

Quitting is worse than coming second but giving everything you’ve got. Coming second but leaving everything out on the field is OK, but quitting is a waste of time. Why because you don’t even finish.

When I lifted my act after missing selection by starting to study again, I re-entered the race. I still had a big enough lead that I could finish and still win. My point is this. When you quit, you don’t even finish the race. Like the saying goes, “Winners never quit and quitters never win.”

I also discovered along the way that when you do the things you don’t like doing you become mentally tougher. Like the school work that I didn’t really want to do, I’ve now become a person who now doesn’t do anything unless I do it properly and this is a quality that I am now instilling in my children. Do it properly or not at all.

So as you can see, it’s not about the school work. In fact I don’t think I’ve ever used any of the stuff I was studying in my last year of school again. Oh and by the way my last year I studied, English, pure maths applied maths, economics and accounting.

When training sessions get hard, because you are doing things that you don’t like what you are doing (like 20 x 150 metre sprints) you’ll find that when the going gets tough, you get going. Why, because you’ve already done the hard yards.

So, with your current finish line in sight, how do you want this race to end? Do you want to come first? Do you want to give it all you’ve got? Or do you want to quit?

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