We Acquire Reward When We Accept Responsibility

I don’t know about you, but I don’t remember having ever met anyone who didn’t want every good thing that was coming to them. However, I have met a lot of people who never received all they could have simply because they weren’t willing to go the extra mile in order to attain a greater reward.

We live in a society that attempts to demand all the rewards in life without meeting any responsibilities and no matter what anyone says, it simply doesn’t work that way. It never has. It never will.

The simple truth is, in order to acquire the rewards we want out of life; we have to be willing to accept responsibility that is above and beyond the normal call of duty.

It may mean working over time. 
It may mean that we have to complete more than our fair share.
It may mean extra effort with little praise.

However, every time we are willing to sacrifice, we move one step closer towards our goals and are that much further ahead in our journey towards success and significance.

One day we’ll have arrived at our destination and we will have found that every extra step was worth it. Indeed we will bless every extra hour and every extra report filed because that is what got us to that point.

The following story was related by Zig Ziglar and illustrates the point beautifully.

Hakeem Olajuwon was the all-pro center for the Houston Rockets.  The year before they won their first championship against the New York Knicks, Hakeem realized that as the team leader his responsibility was more pronounced than anyone else’s.  He acknowledged that he had a weakness in his game, which was the fifteen-foot jump shot.  Think about it.  Here is a player who earned a multi-million-dollar income and had been All-Pro for six consecutive years.  However, he felt that the team would never win a championship until he improved his shooting from fifteen feet.

Before the 1993-1994 season, he went to the gym every day and practiced five hundred 15-foot jump shots.  That’s an incredible test of building strength, endurance, and improvement in performance.  In 1994, when the Houston Rockets defeated the New York Nicks in seven games, there was only one game with more than a five-point difference in the score.  Replays would reveal that had Hakeem not improved his shooting percentage from fifteen feet, the New York Nicks would have won instead of the Houston Rockets. That same year he became the only player in NBA history to win the MVP, Finals MVP and Defensive Player of the Year awards in the same season.

Some questions for you to think about: Do you believe that Hakeem was popular with his teammates as a result of the extra effort he made to help bring the championship to Houston?  Second, do you believe Hakeem was thrilled to win that World’s Championship ring?  And third, do you believe that when his contract was up for renewal that he just might have gotten a raise?

Hakeem helped his teammates, owners and fans gain that championship.  He himself won big-time because he, too, was part of the championship team and, as a matter of fact, was named the Most Valuable Player for his tremendous efforts. Think about it!

So as you go on, remember: You can acquire the rewards you desire, but only as long as you accept the responsibility required.