As a Singaporean sports person when you look at the standards set by your country, reaching the point where you have nothing left to proove comes very quickly. After youve broken national records or won the national championship there is little to challenge you except to break your own records or retain/regain your national championship title. This is where the pro mentality starts to differ from the amateur kampung hero mentality. The next step for the pro mentality is to compete on the world tour and challenge the best in the world and sustain world class professional standards of discipline and performance 100% of the time. Local reputation and recognition becomes insignificant to the pro mentality, because achieving high performance standards and winning results in the global big picture is their objective. They compete with the realistic intention and expectation to win on the world class level. Meanwhile the kampung hero amateur mentality is happy to live on local reputation alone and go to international competitions just for the experience (ya right, experience sightseeing like a tourist) with no real intention or expectation to win the international or regional competitions. The kampung hero takes pride in just attending these competitions, despite the fact that the government is wasting public money on giving them free trips to effectively to be tourists. Just wearing the Singapore tracksuit on a flight paid for by the government is not an achievement to be proud of. Standing on the podium at an international competition with a medal around your neck and the Singapore national anthem being played is the minimum acheivement to be proud of. Pride in achieving anything less is just your ego getting bigger than your reality. Humility is relative to your achievements in the big picture. Humility is relative to the standards you live by and compete with. To even consider yourself to be humble you have to achieve world class results first and feel that you still can do much better and keep your head down and train harder. Singapore has many world champions and professional tour regulars. How many of them do you hear of wanting to talk to the media about their achievements? Compare that to how many kampung hero amateurs you see trying to get media attention. Can you see the difference? That was the first lesson I learnt about humility from the pros on the pro tours.
Posted on: Wed, 26 Mar 2014 01:50:56 +0000
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