Message #96 - Can You Take A Hit?

There was a Sign in our Wrestling Room at Wisconisin, I Looked at EVERYDAY, that Read:

"Measure a Man by the Opposition it Takes to Discourage Him"

As a college athlete I knew there would be obstacals to overcome everyday... i.e., injuries, tough practices, classes and grades, competition, you name it.... etc... All I knew is that I wasnt' going to quit and I was somehow going to be a NCAA Champion.

SUCCESS IS NEVER EASY.....

We all can learn something from ROCKY. Click the picture to watch the clip or CLICK HERE if picture is not visable.



STILL NEED MORE CONVINCING. CLICK HERE TO READ AN EARLIER POST I WROTE ON OPPISITION AND HARDSHIPS

http://www.leekemp.com/

Message #82 - To be Great You Can Never Lose Your Passion...

We all Have Set Backs...Challenges...and yes sometimes Failures...






It is said this farmer boy could not read nor write, failed and went broke five times. His company has survived 8 Recessions, 1 Oil Crisis and 1 Great Depression. ( Ford Motor will make it through this) .







He was not allowed to wait on customers when he worked in a dry goods store because, his boss said, "he didn't have enough sense." (FW Woolworth was founded during the Long Depression that lasted 23 year with a loan of $300 and in 2001 changed its name to Footlocker).







Fired by his newspaper editor who said, "he lacked imagination and had no good ideas." He went bankrupt several times before he built the largest entertainment company in the world. (Walt Disney's creations have since survived 1 Great Depression and 7 Recessions.)

Click Here to read what one of the world's greatest leaders had to say about hardships and difficulties.

Lee Kemp's website www.leekemp.com

Message #81 - Face The Giants in Your Life...

We all Have Giants to Over come in Our Life...I'm Dealing With Some Right Now...We Must However Face Them in Order to Defeat Them.

Giants are the difficult things (or they could be failures) you are dealing with in your Life right now! What ever they are...These are your Giants!

If you're an athlete and your giant was a bad performance, then in order to understand what really happened, you must face it "head on" with honesty and humility. The same is true no matter what your giant is.

You may have more than one giant in your life. You've got to face them though..."head on"...no matter how difficult.

If you don't face them then you'll never defeat "the Giant" and have a break through. To break through something there's got to be some force applied. So if you want a break through you're going to have to apply some force. The bigger the giant...the more force that's needed.

A Break Through can only occur by facing the challenge ("the Giant") with with honesty and humility...and remember to CARRY A BIG STICK!

Message #54 - Everyone has Value and Potential

Inspiration Comes Like a Title Wave Sometimes When You Least Expect It.

Click on the Picture to Meet Cullen Fitzgibbons. (you'll have to watch a short commercial first) Prepare to be Inspired!


Click HERE to read more about Cullen Fitzgibbons.

Message #53 - Meet Dustin Carter

No Excuses Folks!



This young man has an iron will and has more challenges in one minute of his day than most of us will have in our entire lifetime.

Take the cards you have been dealt and make the best of it!

Message #21 - Opposition and Hardships

Character Determines What You Will Choose, Where You Will Go, What You Will Do, When You Will Quit, What You Will Say, When You Will Compromise, How You Will Live and Ultimately What You Will Achieve.


"The ultimate measure of a man is not where he stands in moments of comfort and convenience, but where he stands at times of challenge and controversy". - Martin Luther King, Jr.

This quote by Martin Luther King, Jr., symbolizes what the true measure of a person is. IT IS WHERE THEY STAND WHEN THINGS GET HARD; WHEN THINGS AREN'T SAFE; WHEN THINGS AREN'T CONVENIENT; WHEN THINGS ARE DIFFICULT.

And so it is with anything you want to do or accomplish in life. If you want it...be prepared to fight for it. They don't sell GOLD MEDALS or PURPLE HEARTS at the department store. You won't find them at garage sells either. You'll find them buried deep within the souls of men and women passionate with successfully accomplishing their mission.

Once you set out on your mission, there's no turning back. You can't look back...only forward. Even when you stumble, you must stumble forward. Great accomplishment is only attained by overcoming obstacles. THE GREATER THE OBSTACLE...THE GREATER THE ACCOMPLISHMENT.

The following quote below hung in our wrestling room and I looked at it every day. I made sure I challenged and tested myself every day by somehow making every practice harder than the day before (these were the obstacles), and by conquering them I felt my confidence growing stronger, until I believed there was no obstacle I couldn't overcome.

"You can measure a man by the opposition it takes to discourage him". - Robert C. Savage

Message #18 - Dreaming Big Shackleton Style

Sir Ernest Shackleton and the Endurance

In December 1914, Shackleton set sail, on "the Endurance" with his 27-man crew, to accomplish something that had never been done before...to be the first to completely cross the Antarctic continent on foot. This was an extremely dangerous mission.

To select many of the 27-man crew, it is said, they had responded to the following recruitment notice: "Men wanted for hazardous journey. Small wages. Bitter cold. Long months of complete darkness. Constant danger. Safe return doubtful. Honour and recognition in case of success. —Ernest Shackleton."

Ice conditions were unusually harsh, and the wooden ship, which Shackleton had renamed Endurance after his family motto, Fortitudine Vincimus—"by endurance we conquer," became trapped in the pack ice of the Weddell Sea. For 10 months, the Endurance drifted, locked within the ice, until the pressure crushed the ship. With meager food, clothing and shelter, Shackleton and his men were stranded on the ice floes, where they camped for five months.

When they had drifted to the northern edge of the pack, encountering open leads of water, the men sailed the three small lifeboats they'd salvaged to a bleak crag called Elephant Island. They were on land for the first time in 497 days; however, it was uninhabited and, due to its distance from shipping lanes, provided no hope for rescue.

Recognizing the severity of the physical and mental strains on his men, Shackleton and five others immediately set out to take the crew's rescue into their own hands. In a 22-foot lifeboat named the James Caird, they accomplished the impossible, surviving a 17-day, 800-mile journey through the world's worst seas to South Georgia Island, where a whaling station was located.

The six men landed on an uninhabited part of the island, however, so their last hope was to cross 26 miles of mountains and glaciers, considered impassable, to reach the whaling station on the other side. Starved, frostbitten and wearing rags, Shackleton and two others made the trek, and on the afternoon of May 20, 1916, Shackleton, Worsley and Crean walked into South Georgia's Stromness station. They had marched non-stop for 36 hours. Dressed in rags and black with blubber smoke, they were unrecognizable. The station manager asked "Who the hell are you?" "My name is Shackleton," was the modest reply.

After arriving at the Stromness station, Shackleton made immediate plans to rescue the Elephant Island group. The Norwegians volunteered a ship; but 60 miles from Elephant Island, the ice prevented the unprotected vessel from continuing. As the months passed, Shackleton made increasingly frantic rescue attempts, each time thwarted by ice or weather. At last, on August 30, they succeeded in bringing through the Yelcho, a tug loaned by the Chilean government. It was their fourth attempt. Four months had passed since the Caird's departure, and Shackleton feared the worst.

On Elephant Island, the Yelcho was spotted. As the castaways ran onto the beach, Shackleton, straining through binoculars, counted anxiously. "They are all there!" Worsley reported him crying. It was August 1916, 21 months after the initial departure of the Endurance, Shackleton returned to rescue the men on Elephant Island. Although they'd withstood the most incredible hardship and privation, not one member of the 28-man crew was lost.

Shackleton was quoted as saying "If anything should happen to those fellows while waiting for me, I shall feel like a murderer."

Message #10 - DREAM BIG!!!

Kemp vs. Gable

I wrestled Dan Gable in only my sixth year of wrestling experience. The first time I went out for wrestling was my freshmen year in high school. That was the fall of 1970.

I wrestled Dan Gable in the fall of 1976 in my Sophomore year in college.


Dan Gable was an Olympic Champion in 1972.


There is simply no way I could have entered that match without Dreaming BIG!!!