Interest vs. Commitment

I have been evaluating talent for over 18 years.  It started when I began doing baseball lessons, then as a scout, now as an intern.  The mechanics are not much different from looking at a persons swing or their health.  Evaluating is a learned skill set.  So I want to address interest verse commitment.  I see people all the time that are interested in changing some aspect of their life.  They want to loose weight or get a degree so they can get that job they want, or even meet a mate.  Then I meet people who are committed to these things.  There is a huge difference and unless you are paying attention you might miss them.  Here is the real bottom line.  Interested people will do what is convenient to obtain what they want.  If things work around their schedules, friends, family, work, and activities they will continue to chase their dreams.  When things start to get in the way of their lifestyle or situations get tough and they now are going out of their way or things are not convenient anymore they give up.  Committed people are a different breed.  They do whatever it takes to obtain their dreams and goals.  Which means when things become inconvenient and they will they change their situation, adjust, adapt, and keep moving towards the prize.  The problems are not the focus they are just obstacles and the goal is always in front of them.  The "Do Whatever It Takes" or DWIT is a solution based thinking.  I have been in Chiropractic College for the last three and a half years.  I was Committed to this process from the beginning.  I have failed classes, been set back a quarter, and even failed my last set of board exams.  So?  My eyes are still on the prize.  I am a chiropractor.  I have not finished school and I do not have that piece of paper in my hand but in my mind I am a chiropractor.  I've seen the graduation ceremony so many times in my head that I know it has already happened.  I hope that it really is as amazing as I have imagined.  I could have quit a thousand times and in the first year I wasn't so sure I was smart enough or even if I had the qualifications to even be here.  I'm in class with biochemist, biologist, athletic trainers, and some other fields that I wasn't even sure existed.  So of the smartest and intelligent minds I had ever experienced.  I was just a former professional baseball player and baseball instructor who had been a chiropractic patient for over 25 years and had been adjusting teammates using the moves that had been done to me without any formal training.  The hardest thing was I have only seen my daughter a handful of times in the last three years.  We talk and text but I really miss her presence.  When I came to Palmer one of the reasons was because it was close to her.  Then she moved away.   Another inconvenience I have had to adjust too.  I have had to create a budget and stick to it.  Which means many weekends spent at home, rarely eating out unless someone offers to pay, walking places to save gas,  planning how many miles I have to drive in a week and planing work around this.  I wasn't able to afford all the cool seminars so I looked for other alternatives.  This weekend I borrowed an extremity adjusting video series from my preceptor doctor and watch that.  Cost $0.00 and four hours of my time.  I have found many educating doctors online.  I paid for 2 years of medical training online for $99.00  over 500 lectures and I didn't start watching them until four months ago.  I have obtained $400.00 medical books for $30.00 and use them weekly.  I could have spent that money on shoes or clothes or my girlfriends but my focus and commitment has been constant.  When my ways of being line up with my choices then I know I am committed to my wants, dreams, and goals.  When my choices go against my gut feelings then I know I am off the mark.  It is funny that the definition of sin is failing to hit the mark.  So when I am not in line with my purpose I am actually sinning.   I have seen this over and over in the last three years.  I have made choices that have gone against my purpose.  I once had a class that I thought was so boring that I would just sit in class surfing the Internet looking at crap. I couldn't understand how I failed the class.  I had not mastered the material.  Honestly I did not even know the material.  The second time around I paid very close attention an obtained a B.  So my money and time have really been spent doing the things that will require me to obtain my goals.  I'm not saying you have to be this focused Nazi and not have any balance in your life.  I have the mentality that I can have it all.  I have been in relationships, played lots of baseball, trained my body into the best shape ever, traveled a little, and experienced the bay area.  I have also said "No." a lot.  Going out and partying it up and knowing full well that I will not be studying the next day has made me avoid this behavior.  If I lived around whether things were convenient I would have quit this program in the first week.  There is nothing convenient about this program.  It stretches my limits all the time.  Maybe I wasted days and weeks studying material in such a tired state I felt like I was not retaining any of the information.  Maybe subconsciously I really was.  Some people can not go through life and miss a thing.  They have to go to that wedding even though it falls right before finals week.  Or that concert, or trip, or even go home all the time miss because they miss their family.  I laugh when they tell how much money they get and all the crap they blow it on.  It's a loan.  That trip to South America that cost $3000.00 today will be $30,000 with compounding interest.  Or the new car or truck, all the furniture, and trips to Vegas and Hawaii.  They will be paying on that stuff  for the next 20 years even after they have sold it. I kept things to a minimum.  I worked my butt off because I didn't take all the loans and I did not buy things with my loan money.  I used my earnings.  I have even maintained a $500.00 a month car payment.  I should have sold it, but I like my Jeep.
So I was willing to DWIT to have it.  I worked late nights whenever I was called to.  I umpired all spring and summer as many days a week as I could.  I cooked for myself and ate lots of rice and oatmeal.  I didn't get a gym membership until my last year and I only kept it for five months.  I do not need a gym to motivate me.  I can work out just as hard with body weight or use the free gym at the apartment complex.  Today I work in a clinic that has a gym in it.  It was one of the reasons I chose it.
I hope this is starting to make sense.  There is a huge difference between being interested and being committed to something.  When you chose to do something then make sure you are committed to it.  Your effort and enthusiasm will be high and positive and it will be fun.  Chiropractic school has been hard but I will say it has been fun too.  If you know me then if its not fun I will not do it.

Reason #2 why I chose to become a chiropractor.
Recently on HBO there was a special report on the pay for minor league baseball players. here is the link.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=youtu.be&v=tfgsenSCyPE&app=desktop

There is a huge difference in pay from a major league player and a minor league player. I remember Carlos Castillo telling me that his check when he got called up was somewhere in the $8500 range. He had been there for two weeks. I didn't make that much for a whole season. Yes sir my first year with the White Sox I earned every penny of the $4200.00 before taxes. It was probably about $3500.00 after. Now that was only five months of work, since I signed as a free agent on May 6th. I will mention that the following year when I went to spring training I was paid $36 a week, which I had to give the club house manager $8.00. They fed all of us three meals a day which included breakfast, a sack lunch and dinner at the hotel. Who can live on $36 a week? I am thankful that The Organization paid for the hotel while I was there. When I did the break down of my last years salary with the Sox I was earning $1250.00 a month before taxes. I went to the office or the ballpark just about everyday of the season which starts the first week of April and can go to the middle of


September if team made it to playoffs. We play 140 games plus playoffs in 150 days. So lets do the math. The typical day started for me about 11:30am with flips or short toss with the hitting coach (some guy started earlier) and then early work with the positional fielding coaches, side pens with pitchers, full stretch run and throw, batting practice, break for the other team to take batting practice, suit up and then a 7:05 game start, finish by 10:00, then weights, shower, leave exhausted 11:00pm. Road trips meant morning lifting so the day started earlier and ended after the game. Twelve hours a day for 150 days equals exactly 1800 hours of work. That is only 20 hours less than an average person working 40 hours a week working 50 weeks a year. I use 50 weeks instead of 52 because everyone gets a vacation. We would get three days a season for All-Star Break. So I earned $7500.00 that season divided by 1800 hours comes out to be $4.17 an hour. Wow, what an idiot I seemed to be on paper now that I actually did the breakdown. I was worth so much more than that as a drywall apprentice. I earned $14.00 an hour doing that. As a professional hitting instructor I earned $60.00 an hour doing that. If I would have made it to the majors and sat the bench for a full season I would have earn $270,000 in 1999. I earned 2.7% of the major league minimum in 1999. I was blind a stupid, chasing my childhood dream. I was once asked if I would play professional baseball for free? I didn't think twice about my answer either. Hell No! Then I would say that my time is worth more than that. I laugh now because my time really wasn't. It was worth $4.17 per hour. So in the off season I would work my butt off saving money so I could weather spring training and the first two weeks of the season till I would receive that check. Also if you cried about it they would hand you a Taco Bell application and say, "Taco Bell is hiring why don't you go there?"
So this is the second reason I decided to become a doctor. I want to receive the compensation that I am worth. I have a tremendous amount of value and I feel I should be compensated handsomely for it. I'm glad some players finally sued for wage equality. I hope they win and all of us that played receive a check for back pay. It would help with some of my current expenses as I finish my last year. The lower 10% of chiropractors earn around $96,000 per year. That is still 12 times greater than the average minor league player makes. According to MLB, the average MLB player earns $3.39 million! http://espn.go.com/mlb/story/_/id/10158314/mlb-average-salary-54-percent-339-million So as a chiropractor in the lower 10% of earners this would still be 3% of what the average MLB player earns. I figure I find comical.

What Does It Take to Be the Best?

To be the best your ways of BEING have to align with what you are trying to accomplish. For example, for me growing up I wanted to be a few things. A doctor, A professional motor cross rider, a police officer, a marine, and a professional baseball player. As I grew older I started talking more and more about being a professional baseball player then anything else. I one point I gave up riding motor cross because I feared I would injure myself and not be able to play baseball. So my ways of being started to change to conform to what I was really wanting. I like to party too, but when the partying and drinking began to affect my baseball performance then I had to cut that out too. Again partying and drinking were not in alignment of what I was wanting so I changed my way of being. I even used performance enhancers to elevate my game. Some people say, "You did whatever you had to to make it happen." It it the same with chiropractic school. The closer I get to the prize the more I see myself modify my behavior. I am on a three week break now and all I can think about is how I am going to pay my daughters medical expenses, where can I find extra work, and how many hours a day do I need to study to prepare for my next round of board exams. Everyday I do not put in the time of my craft I feel like I am going backwards. I am not wired for mediocrity. I find it hard to sleep at night just getting by in school with C's. Nobody is going to know what I received for a grade in school accept me. They will just see that I have a doctorate in chiropractic. People will just trust that I know what I am doing. Only thing is I know that I am just getting by and it bothers me. I question my knowledge of the situations. If I only know 70% of the material how can I be 100% sure I know what is going on? Maybe I am to hard on myself? Maybe I ask too much of myself? I remember training as a player and what that required. It required can't see hours. Can't see hours are hours that people can't see you working. Before people wake up and while they are sleeping at night, I was honing my craft. I remember some nights hitting with Eric Cole of the Houston Astros at 11:30 pm. I have worn out so many pairs of batting gloves I should have bought stock in Franklin, Easton, and Rawlings. That is what it takes. Champion Sports has a moto that I align with. "It takes a little more to be a Champion." They are right. There are guys with unbelievable natural talent. If they do not continue to grow, experience, change, adjust, and get better, then in a short period of time they become average players. The raw player or average player that continues to do repetitions and develop their skills will so pass the natural player that does nothing. I find myself lying in bed at night saying how am I going to get the reps I need to become a professional at chiropractic? The back and neck are not an Iron Mike with the ability to just spit out fastball after fastball. How am I going to get patient reps? How will I be able to diagnose injuries and subluxations correctly if I only have 250 treatment hours to graduate? It seems impossible to me sometimes. Then someone says, "That is why they call it a practice." I get to practice on unknowing participants. I am going to take some 60 year old woman's neck in my hands and give it just the right amount of thrust to move the bones in a way that gives her relief without giving her a stroke. Sound scary to you? It used to be scary for me. Today, two years later I know that my intention is to put life back into the body. I only with to restore things not destroy them. I love chiropractic because it has many similarities to baseball. Both are performance and result driven. Both require daily practice to improve. Continuing education is a requirement for both. My body has to be able to perform at a high level for both. Proper practice leads to better performance. I have heard people say perfect practice equals perfect performance and there is truth in this. What is really required is the discipline to be committed to what I say I want and the actions I do. I can say I want to be a chiropractor, but if I just go to school and do the minimums and then find other things to occupy my time and I really committed to what I said I wanted? Am I really doing a little more? Am I really doing what it takes to become a champion for chiropractic? If the results are not in alignment with the goal then there is only one piece of the equation to change and that would be the action. I am committed to changing the results and the action. What are you committed to doing?