johna | 
01 25th, 2010| 
COMING IN JANUARY 2010. Author John A. Andrews, son of the Caribbean soil, penetrates inside the belly of the drug world. In an environment saturated with corruption, deception, duplicity, deceit, and inequities of all kinds,
Andrews conceives a cross Atlantic, greed driven fiasco, embedded within the drug epidemic. Can Jamaican born, DEA “Rude Buay,” save his country from the tyranny of the Dragon Drug Cartel?
TOTAL COMMITMENT (The Mindset Of Champions)
It has become very apparent that we live in the microwave age. One of instant meals, instant this and instant that. You get on a plane in Los Angeles or New York and within a few hours you arrive in Europe. We rush to work, rush back home, gulp down our food. Make the gesture for the sign of the cross. We settle for a snack of type sexual interlude instead a buffet. We get married today and divorce right after the honeymoon. Everything happens so fast, no one seems to embrace the commitment mindset.
In all of this mad rush, we toss our values into an abyss. Our dreams and goals plummet with that decent. Consequently, our commitment to our vision and to others becomes short lived. We blame the system, the economy, our lover, our parents, our kids, the devil, and even God gets thrown into the mix sometimes. We inadvertently kick the cat. We lose the good we oft might win by failing to commit to anything, therefore we settle for anything. As a result, we spend our lives sitting on the fence.
A champion, on the other hand, spends time working on himself. He knows that if he fails to prepare he has prepared to fail. He has to be his best. Therefore, he commits, knowing that winning is an all time thing, according to Vince Lombardi.
Whenever I think of commitment, my mind goes back to the airplane taxiing down the runway scenario. Prior to take off, the pilot receives the go ahead from the air traffic control tower. He then engages the aircraft, it picks up speed, engages the sky and the landing gear retracts as it becomes airborne. As it gains altitude, passengers are instructed to unfasten their seatbelts - refreshments are served. That plane is now committed to fly. The pilot announces the estimated time of arrival, and the weather in that city of destination. There is an end in mind.
Another story I once heard helps putting commitment into perspective. One day a chicken and a pig were riding in a taxi. Simultaneously, they noticed a billboard displaying “The Great American breakfast” (bacon and eggs). The chicken looks across at the pig and remarks, ”Look at us up there! That is totally awesome isn’t it?” The pig with no time to waste responds, “For you it’s all in a day’s work but for me its total commitment.” The chicken was involved but the pig was committed. We find that at times commitment could require all you’ve got.
In 1963, the late Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. while addressing a segment of the American populous echoed, “If a man hasn’t discovered something that he will die for, he isn’t fit to live.”9 King’s life was saturated with a cause greater than self. His cause required all or nothing. That’s the way a champion thinks.
“There’s only one way to succeed in anything, and that is to give it everything. I do, and I demand that my players do,” echoed Vince Lombardi, the late coach of the Green Bay Packers. No wonder he was one of the best to ever coach the game of football. On Feb. 2, 1959, Lombardi arrived in Green Bay and told the committee, “I want it understood that I am in complete command here.” His commitment to the game helped to totally transform the Green Bay Packers back then.
In the early part of 1959, the Packers were coming off a 1-10-1 season — the worst in team history. Winners of six NFL championships during the Curly Lambeau era, the Packers hadn’t had a winning season since 1947. Lombardi’s first season with the Packers was a stunning success, turning that 1-10-1 team of 1958 into a 7-5 team in 1959 and picking up unanimous Coach of the Year honors in the process.
His first game with the Packers was a 9-6 victory over the Chicago Bears in new City Stadium — later to be renamed Lambeau Field — and when it was over, the players carried their head coach off the field in triumph.3
Sir Winston Churchill after being elected as Britain’s Prime Minister at age 65 remarked: Victory is our aim, victory at all costs, victory in spite of terror, victory, however long and hard the road may be; for without victory there is no survival.4
Then, after the disaster in France and the evacuation of the British Army from the beaches of Dunkirk, Churchill, on June 4, 1940, spoke to Parliament on the possibility of a German invasion and what Britain’s reaction would be: “We shall fight on the beaches. We shall fight on the landing grounds. We shall fight in the fields, and in the streets, we shall fight in the hills. We shall never surrender!”5 He also said: There comes a special moment in everyone’s life, a moment for which that person was born. That special opportunity, when he seizes it, will fulfill his mission — a mission for which he is uniquely qualified. In that moment he finds greatness.6
Churchill led with courage and strong determination. “His bull-dog determination smashed through every obstacle that stood in the road of victory. Dubbed the “bulldog warrior,” Friend and foe alike knew the meaning of his raised two forefingers which formed a “V” –victory at all costs.6 When passion blends with purpose, an unbeatable force emerges. Like a tidal wave, it lifts the possessor toward what some would call unattainable heights.
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