A Deep Commitment to Excellence and Change

How do you go on an effective diet? How do you stop smoking? How do you stop drinking?

In short, you do it and it's done! Then you work like heck the rest of your life to stay on the fat free, smoke free, or booze free wagon.

IBM founder Thomas Watson once said, "If you want to achieve excellence, you can get there today. As of this second quit doing less than excellent work. The idea is profound!

Suppose you are your average Karate Ka and, for your own futures sake (not because of peer pressure from others in your dojo) you decide to set a matchless standard for Karate. How? You do it. Now.

Sure, you will make mistakes at first. You'll get a lot of it wrong. You'll need to read up, attend Karate seminars, call other Karate Ka, and visit other dojos to collect information. And you will need to keep doing such things to maintain your edge (much like a professional athlete does) until the day you hang up your obie.

Nonetheless, you become excellent in a nanosecond, starting with your first training session on Monday.

Simply picture yourself, even if it's a fuzzy picture, as the greatest Karate Ka ever -- and start acting accordingly. Put yourself in lights on Broadway, as a galaxy-class Karate Ka; then perform your script with unparalleled gusto!

Does it sound wild? Silly? Naive? Maybe, but it isn't. The first 99.9 percent of getting from here to there is the determination to do it and not to compromise, no matter what sort of roadblocks those around you (including peers) erect.

The last 99.9 percent (I know it adds up to more than 100 percent -- that's life) is working like heck to (1) keep your spirits up through the inevitable storms, (2) learn something new every day, and (3) practice that something, awkward or not and no matter what, until it becomes a part of your nature.

Keep this up for even a few hours; people all over will start looking at you oddly. You want them to, because you have achieved your first tiny victory. You, Mr. Planet-class Karate Ka, are living a new life. Their misfortune is that they haven't figured it out for themselves yet.

Does all this sound like a quarter-baked pep talk better delivered under a revival tent? Hardly. (And if you don't believe me, ask a friend in Alcoholics Anonymous, perhaps the most effective change program on earth today.) You see, the deeper point is that you'll either change in a nanosecond or -- you never will. It's true with booze, smokes, fat and world class Karate. The determined shift of mind-set is an all or nothing deal!

In case you can' t tell, I'm fed up to my eyebrows people who talk about how l-o-n-g it takes to achieve change. That’s pure rubbish. It takes forever to maintain change; but it takes just a flash to achieve change of even the most profound sort.

Change is that simple. Honest.