"The basic difference between an ordinary man
and a warrior is that a warrior takes everything
as a challenge, while an ordinary man takes
everything as a either a blessing or a curse."
- Don Juan

"If you can imagine it, you can achieve it.
If you can dream it, you can become it."
- William A. Ward

"So many of our dreams,
at first seem impossible,
then they seem improbable,
and then, when we summon the will,
they soon become inevitable."
-Christopher Reeve

"The mark of a good action is that
it appears inevitable in retrospect."
- Robert Louis Stevenson

"Character consists of what you do on the third and fourth tries."
-James Michener

"If you don't know where you're going,
you'll end up somewhere else."
-Yogi Berra

"Judge a man by his questions,
rather than his answers."
-Voltaire

"Do not go where the path may lead, go instead
wher there is no path and leave a trail."
-Ralph Waldo Emerson

"Great spirits have always encountered
violent opposition from mediocre minds."
-Albert Einstein

"Results? Why man, I have gotten a lot of results.
I know 50,000 things that won't work."
-Thomas Edison

"You must have long-range goals to keep you from
being frustrated by short-range failures."
-Charles C. Noble

"One that would have the fruit
must climb the tree."
-Thomas Fuller

"Genius is nothing but continued attention."
-Claude A. Helvetius

"Second only to freedom,
Learning is the most precious option on earth."
-Norman Cousins

"We know that a person thinks not when they tell us
what they are thinking, but by their actions."
-Isaac B. Singer

"Perfect valor consists in doing without witnesses that
which we would be capable of doing before everyone."
-Francois, Duc De La Rochefoucauld

"A hero is a man who defies adversity
by doing what he believes is right in spite of fear."
-Anthony Robbins

"The human capacity is incredible: We can
Adapt to anything if we make the right demands
upon ourselves incrementally."
- Anthony Robbins

It may be repeated over and over again, but that's why I like it the most:

"Crawl, Walk, Run"


I have to tell myself that every time I run to keep myself from burning myself out trying to make a great time.

It's kept me from hurting myself and kept my attitude positive because I'm not afraid to admit I'm still in my crawling stages.

A good philosophy and one of those, "If wishes were horses then beggars would ride" sort of thing. Works well in an training environment and when you have the luxury of time with which to implement it. I have found that it has been more of a jog, run, sprint world once you clear the jump platform where the continuum runs from jog at day one to sprint as the last day closes in on your career. The key is that you keep to your charted course so that you never resort to running in circles otherwise you will find youself sucked up in a vortex of your own indecisiveness as the pace accelerates with ever increasing responsibilities and challenges.
But then, I never really considered myself a champion.

WM, JM, thank you for the posts.

"Big Shots are little shots who keep shooting."
- Christopher Morley

"No generalization is wholly true,
not even this one."
- Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr.

"Act as if what you do makes a difference.
It does."
- William James

"Nothing can resist the human will that will stake
even its existence on its stated purpose."
- Benjamin Disraeli

"Other people may NOT have had high expectations for me...
but I had high expectations for myself."
- Shannon Miller

"A man of courage is full of faith."
- Marcus Tullis Cicero

"The higher we soar,
the smaller we appear to those who cannot fly."
- Friedrich Nietzsche

"The higher we soar,
The harder it is to shit on someone."
- Smart Ass

"You don't just stumble into the future.
You create your own future."
- Roger Smith

"Man is a goal seeking animal.
His life only has meaning if he is reaching out and striving for his goals."
- Aristotle

"Don't just face your fear,
embrace it."
- Anthony Robbins

"Knowledge is power,
but enthusiasm throws the switch."
- Ivern Ball

"There are two cardinal sins
from which all others spring:
impatience and laziness."
- Franz Kafka

"Every area of trouble gives out a ray of hope,
and the one unchangeable certainty is that
nothing is certain or unchangeable."
- John F. Kennedy

"Great things are done by a series of
small things brought together."
- Vincent Van Gogh

"If you can dream it, you can do it.
Always remember, this whole thing was started by a mouse."
- Walt Disney

"Surmounting difficulty is the crucible that forms character."
- Anthony Robbins

"Experience is not what happens to a man.
It is what a man does with what happens to him."
- Aldous Huxley

"I can give you a six-word formula for success:
Think things through - then follow through."
- Captain Edward Rickenbacker

"Mistakes are the portals of discovery."
- James Joyce

"Often we don't realize how far we've come because
we're so caught up in the process of achieveing."
- Anthony Robbins

"He who moves not forward goes backward."
- Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

"When you're green, you're growing.
When you're ripe, you rot."
- Ray Crock

"To begin is the most important part of any
quest and by far, the most courageous."
- Plato

"The only pace you'll find success before
work is in the dictionary."
- May B. Smith