Pas­tor Clive Dot­tin

I would like to thank East­ern Cred­it Union for the tremen­dous work it is do­ing in de­vel­op­ing thou­sands of youth in T&T. East­ern is a com­pas­sion­ate cor­po­rate cit­i­zen and is a role mod­el that should be em­u­lat­ed by those who claim to care. Wal­ter Sha­ran­sky was im­pris­oned for sev­er­al years at a con­cen­tra­tion camp. How­ev­er, he kept hope alive by en­joy­ing a process called "men­tal re­hearsal." He played chess us­ing the are­na of imag­i­na­tion. He nev­er lost his san­i­ty when he was even­tu­al­ly re­leased. Gary Kas­parov, Russ­ian glob­al cham­pi­on, vis­it­ed Is­rael and de­feat­ed all the cab­i­net play­ers. But he lost to Sha­ran­sky, why? Now there is a word called vi­su­al­i­sa­tion.

Gene Tun­ney dreamt that he fought Jack Dempsey and lost. Maxwell Maltz in his book sy­chocy­ber­net­ics de­scribes the con­ver­sa­tion be­tween this amaz­ing per­son­al­i­ty and his coach. Gene was amazed at the pow­er of the brain and the link be­tween re­al­i­ty and imag­i­na­tion. He com­plained to his coach that when he woke up from the dream, he was per­spir­ing as if he was in an ac­tu­al fight...but he lost. The coach told Gene that he be­lieved that he was go­ing to lose the fight, be­cause the box­ing gu­rus, the me­dia and some of his close friends sug­gest­ed that he was go-ing to lose the fight. The coach shocked him by re­veal­ing to him that he Gene agreed with the pes­simists sub­con­scious­ly. The coach told Tun­ney that if he be­lieved he was go­ing to lose the fight, then he was go­ing to lose the fight.

Then came the next ques­tion from the chal­lenger, "What should I do?" The coach told him he must dis­tance him­self from those who were neg­a­tive. In the few days be­fore the fight, the coach paint­ed a win­ning dream on the can­vas of his imag­i­na­tion. Gene turned off the ra­dio, did not read the news­pa­pers, re­fused to lis­ten to the box­ing ex­perts and heard the voice of the coach. He won the fight. No­vak Djokovic, lawn ten­nis cham­pi­on; Tiger Woods, golf­ing leg­end; Sachin Ten­dulkar, Rahul Dravid, the wall; Michael Phelps, ex­tra­or­di­nary swim­ming cham­pi­on; Us­ain Bolt, 100 me­tres sprint­ing ge­nius have a few sim­i­lar­i­ties-they have a dream, they have the pas­sion, they have the com­mit­ment. I watched seg­ments of the last Test match be­tween Eng­land and In­dia. It was about the psy­chol­o­gy of dom­i­na­tion and the heart of a cham­pi­on. It was In­dia's first in­nings and they had al­ready lost two wick­ets; Ten­dulkar came out to bat en­joy­ing re­sound­ing ap­plause.

Im­me­di­ate­ly, An­drew Strauss made a bowl­ing change. He brought back James An­der­son, the re­verse swing ex­pert, in­to the at­tack. Five out of sev­en times, An­der­son had ac­count­ed for the demise of the bat­ting mae­stro. Sens­ing that An­der­son had the psy­cho­log­i­cal edge, Strauss made a strate­gic move. An­der­son bowled this im­por­tant over, and twice he trau­ma­tised Ten­dulkar, but did not get the wick­et.

In the very next over, Bres­lan got the wick­et. Bres­lan reaped the re­ward, but it was An­der­son who did the psy­cho­log­i­cal and emo­tion­al dam­age. In­dia through­out that match looked like losers-no Za­heer Khan, no Haber­jan Singh, a dis­turbed Ten­dulkar, an in­jured bats­man, an in­con­sis­tent Sree-nath and an over­bur­dened Shar-ma-the recipe for de­struc­tion. Nev­er un­der­es­ti­mate the pow­er of con­fi­dence, hope and the imag­i­na­tion.

But it can­not be just about dream­ing. Af­ter all, you can­not ro­man­ti­cise your pil­low night and day. When sun­rise comes you have to wake up to pur­sue your dreams. You might have heard what the slave mas­ter told the guard on the sug­ar plan­ta­tion-"Wake up the slave, be­cause he may be dream­ing about free­dom." This is the pow­er of a dream. John Wy­att il­lus­trates the pow­er of a dream and the com­mit­ment re­quired by work­ing scores of hours in the lab­o­ra­to­ry, mak­ing his dream a pri­or­i­ty. This il­lus­tri­ous sci­en­tist/physi­cist from the Mass­a­chus­setts In­sti­tute of Tech­nol­o­gy has a dream of help­ing the blind to see. So he in­vent­ed the bion­ic eye­ball. In sim­ple terms, this con­sists of a cam­era lo­cat­ed on your spec­ta­cle that trans­mits sig­nals wire­less­ly to a ti­ta­ni­um-en­cased mi­crochip on your reti­na, which trans­mits the sig­nals via the op­tic nerve to the op­tic cen­tre of the brain. He has a dream and is pur­su­ing that dream.

In the book, Tal­ent Is Over­rat­ed, Ge­off Colvin proves that it is not just tal­ent but hard work that is re­spon­si­ble for the suc­cess of most cham­pi­ons. Long be­fore Tiger was two years old, he was watch­ing his fa­ther play­ing golf: "So here's the sit­u­a­tion: Tiger is born in­to the home of an ex­pert golfer and con­fessed 'golf ad­dict' who loves to teach and is ea­ger to be­gin teach­ing his new son as soon as pos­si­ble. Earl's wife does not work out­side the home, and they have no oth­er chil­dren; they have de­cid­ed that 'Tiger would be the first pri­or­i­ty in our re­la­tion­ship,' Earl wrote. Earl gives Tiger his first met­al club, a put­ter, at the age of sev­en months. He sets up Tiger's high chair in the garage, where Earl is hit­ting balls in­to a net, and Tiger watch­es for hours on end. 'It was like a movie be­ing run over and over and over for his view,' Earl wrote. Earl de­vel­ops new tech­niques for teach­ing the grip and the putting stroke to a stu­dent who can­not yet talk. Be­fore Tiger is two, they are at the golf course play­ing and prac­tis­ing reg­u­lar­ly."

Be­tween age four and 21, he had sev­er­al coach­es. Let us ex­am­ine all the rea­sons for his suc­cess:

A role mod­el fa­ther, Earl-a golf­ing ad­dict; vi­su­al­i­sa­tion-age of sev­en months; prac­tice-de­lib­er­ate prac­tice; strate­gic think­ing and the heart of a cham­pi­on. Let us turn to the area of de­lib­er­ate prac­tice. This con­cept at­tacks the idea that you have to prac­tice over and over, hours up­on hours, with­out a goal, with­out metacog­ni­tion-think­ing what you are think­ing-and you will au­to­mat­i­cal­ly get bet­ter. This is the fur­thest thing from the truth. Ac­cord­ing to Colvin, "de­lib­er­ate prac­tice re­quires that one iden­ti­fies cer­tain sharply de­fined el­e­ments of per­for­mance that need to be im­proved, and then work in­tent­ly on them."

Rud­yard Kipling has com­posed a po­em called If, as I con­clude tonight I would like to leave you with a few vers­es:

"If you can force your heart and nerve and sinew

To serve your turn long af­ter they are gone,

And hold on when there is noth­ing in you

Ex­cept the will which says to them: hold on!"

If you can walk with crowds and keep your virtue,

Or walk with kings-nor lose the com­mon touch,

If nei­ther foes nor lov­ing friends can hurt you;

If all men count with you, but none too much.

If you can fill the un­for­giv­ing minute

With 60 sec­onds worth of dis­tance run,

Yours is the Earth and every­thing that's in it,

And-which is more-you'll be a man, my son!

Have the courage of a cham­pi­on, the imag­i­na­tion of a cham­pi­on, the no­bil­i­ty of a cham­pi­on, the com­mit­ment of a cham­pi­on.

Con­grat­u­la­tions, and may God bless you.