THE HEART OF A CHAMPION

I received this last night from my mentor and friend Dale Brown who has great respect for author, Bob Richards. For those unfamiliar with Bob:

The Reverend Bob Richards was a theology professor in California when he qualified for the U.S. Olympic team as a pole vaulter in 1952. The duel for the gold medal was waged between Richards and fellow American Don Laz. They both cleared 4.50m with their second attempt and then missed twice at 4.55m. But Richards went over on his third try and won. The 1952 Olympics in Helsinki were the first at which athletes from the U.S.S.R. competed, and there was concern that Cold War tensions would mar the Games. Richards countered this mood by leading an unofficial delegation of American athletes to visit the Soviet athletes. Richards returned to the Olympics in 1956. The pole vault final was held in the midst of gusty winds. Richards won by clearing 4.56m on his second attempt. He is the only person to win the pole vault twice. In addition, because he also won a bronze medal at the London Olympic Games in 1948, Richards is the only vaulter to earn three medals. Bob Richards also holds a special place in American cultural history because he was the first athlete to appear on a box of Wheaties cereal.

The Heart of a Champion
By: Bob Richards

1. Life has its hurts, its setbacks, its defeats, its heartaches. No man can meet life in all of its fullness, but he must at one time or another meet hurt and pain and suffering—not only physical but mental pain, spiritual pain, financial pain. In every walk of life there is some sort of suffering and heartache that you’ve got to face, but the champion is the one who can meet it with a stiff upper lip, with faith in God, and somehow, even wit that hurt and pain in his heart, he keeps on going to achieve greatness. I’ve never read the story of a great man without finding that at one time or another in that man’s life he went through days of hurt, and it was the molding influence of the hurt that made the man what he was. It’s a great principle for life. It’s the heart of a champion.

2. The people who will really accomplish great things in life are those who are willing to discipline their lives, who maintain their health, their vitality, their efficiency through this process of rigorous discipline in what they take into their bodies and what they do in life.

3. Stop working, and your power, your ability, your endurance, your form will leave you. There’s only one way you can get to the top and stay there, in athletics, and that’s through long hours of hard work.

As the psychologists have put it the most creative principle of personality development is “hard work and plenty of it.” I’ve come to agree wit Thomas A. Edison, America’s great scientist, who said that “Genius is 1 percent inspiration and 99 percent perspiration.”

4. As important as a body is in athletics, it is not as important as the frame of mind or the mental perspective that a fellow has. You can only go as high in life as you dare to believe you can go. Hitch your wagon to a star; aim for the great things in life. As Browning puts it: “But a man’s reach should exceed his grasp, or what’s a heaven for?” I dare to believe this: what a man thinks in his mind has a way of becoming reality in life. John Milton expressed it well when he said” “The mind is its own place and in itself can make a heaven of hell, a hell of heaven.” It’s what you thing that makes the difference.

5. In the spiritual world, the apostle Paul expressed it beautifully when he said: “Forgetting what lies behind and looking to the future, I press on toward the mark of the high calling of God in Christ Jesus my Lord” (see Phil. 3:13-13). Deep in the heart of every person are great goals that he wants to accomplish. In some people it is a burning desire, an obsession, while in others it may be a faintly felt thing. But it is in every human being. No matter how much man may accomplish, he will always be frustrated. No matter how much you gain in the way of wealth, no matter how much you achieve in the way of athletic greatness or in scientific progress, there will still be that gnawing within you, that sense of not having done enough.

6. If I have learned on thing in sports, it is that before a man ever scales the heights of greatness without, he must first of all learn to control himself within.

7. I don’t believe anyone ever got to the top without going through the valleys.

8. You never know what potential you’ve got within you until you reach out for the highest.

9. Each and every one of us has some sort of goal or ideal or objective as to the kind of person that we would like to be. But the great tragedy with most of us is this: We don’t know how to be the person we ought to be. We have goals, but they are more or less vague abstractions, nebulous. They might even be clearly defined, but because we don’t know how to accomplish our goals, they go begging, and we never arrive at being the kind of person we want to be.

You’ve got to analyze yourself, recognize your weakness and work on them. Now this is one of the hardest things for a person to do. It is very easy for us to take a negative attitude toward our weaknesses, justifying them by saying that after all, we were born with this particular weakness—or we have just acquired it through the circumstances of life—and actually there is nothing we can do about it. Or we can defend a weakness, and in the process of this defense, we may start to build our lives around it, making the weakness the center of our lives instead of conquering the thing and overcoming it. Now you can’t react negatively to your weaknesses like this and expect to attain success.

There are vivid illustrations of what can happen when a man does something about his own weakness. I think this is what the Bible means when it says, “My strength is made perfect in weakness” (2 Cor. 12:9). I think God is telling us here that He won’t help us justify our weaknesses, that He will not help us defend them, but that He will help us to turn them into strength. If you want to be great in any realm of life, analyze yourself, recognize your weaknesses and work on them.

10. I am convinced that if anyone is going to become great in life or in sports, he has to welcome competition, to welcome someone, a pioneer, who will set the standard high. I don’t think that most people compete enough; they give up too easily, they level off, they let their personal standards dominate them and they never press on. Would that we had the competitive spirit of Paul the apostle, who said, “I run in such a way, as not without aim; I box in such a way, as not beating the air” (1 Cor. 9:26 NASB). He ran to win. He also said, “do you not know that those who run in a race all run, but one receives the prize? Run in such a way that you may obtain it” (v. 24 NKJV). Paul was a fierce competitor. It was what made him a great man of God. You’ve got to compete! It is tragic in this day, when there is so much evil in the world, that so many of us refuse competition. It is time for us to re-evaluate ourselves and go on to the heights we should reach.

If a man is going to be what he ought to be, he’s got to be willing to put out just a little bit more. The more I watch great men, the more I see the processes by which men achieve their goals, the more I am convinced that it is the willingness to put out just a little bit more that makes the difference. The difference between a saint and a sinner is not as great as people may think. The difference between a PHD in school and the fellow who didn’t quite make it is that little bit more study, that extra page that a man turns every night as he burns the midnight oil. The difference in business is not always that one man is more gifted than another. It is that one man puts out a little bit more.

11. Dr. Arnold Toynbee, in his amazing ten-volume history of civilization, says that you can measure civilization by studying the responses of the people of history to the great challenges they have had to face; that history is only the record of how they faced one crisis after another. As we have responded, so has history taken its course. When we have responded negatively, progress has slowed down, cultures have disintegrated, empires have collapsed. When we have responded positively, mankind has leaped ahead. The way we react to our challenges determines the destiny of our lives, our country and our world.