I recently read this blog post by Chris Flett (GhostCEO and successful entrepreneur) where he talks about the price he paid to get what he wanted and where he wanted to be. He finishes with…

“Have you paid the price for what you want to do? If so, what was the price? If not, what’s holding you back?”

This resonated with me as a bit of a gut check in terms of what I am doing now that is contributing to where I want to be and it also got me thinking about when this has shown up in my life in the past…here’s one story…

When I was 13, I had set a goal to earn a full volleyball scholarship to a school in the US (I had written this goal down in my journal). Taking the serious steps to achieve this goal probably started when I was around 14 years old:

• I knew I needed to get faster so I asked the guy who worked at the front desk of my local gym if he had any recommendations for a sprinting program. He gave me some pointers that I took and built myself a sprinting program (knowing what I know now, it was a pretty shanty program I put together, lol, but hey, it was something!). I did it every other morning before school on the back road that I lived on.
• On the other mornings, I went to school early and did extra serving and setting reps whenever both my mom would drive me to school at 7:15am and my coach would meet me at the school that early to open up the gym for me (Joe and moms, you both are amazing, I am forever grateful!)
• I knew I needed to be able to jump higher because I wasn’t going to grow much taller. I convinced the coach of the boys volleyball team to let me join them in their jump training because it wasn’t part of the girl’s team training regimen. He said, “It’s bloody hard and I’m not going to treat you differently, I only want you here if you’re all in and can keep up.”  I said…”When’s the first session?”
• On the days when I didn’t have practice after school (M,W,F), I would bus 45mins into town to workout/train knowing that I would have to wait an extra hour or more after I was done before my mom would finish work and we could drive home. 
• I recorded and repeatedly watched NCAA Div 1 women’s volleyball conference and championship matches, and studied the best setters in the country at the time so that I could emulate what they did.
• Whenever I could, I went to ID camps in larger cities to get my name out there (being from a small town and an “A” school, no one really knew who I was). 
• I tried out for the BC Provincial team and was shut down two years in a row before finally making the team in Grade 10. 

*When I was 18, I landed a full scholarship to play volleyball at a NCAA Div 1 school in the US.

Until now, I hadn’t really thought about that whole process. I only focused on the result and never paid homage to the 4-5 years of leg work that lead to end result. The two things that stayed krystal clear throughout and kept me on track when I ran into set backs was my goal – the scholarship – and my ‘why’ – my family didn’t have money for me to go to school, I wanted the same opportunity as my friends, and I didn’t want to go into debt to get it.

A clear goal (the ‘what’) + a purpose (the ‘why’) + the drive + the persistance = amazing results

So, I’ll post Chris’s questions again – Have you paid the price for what you want to do? If so, what was the price? If not, what’s holding you back?