Be Commited to the Commitment

A few weeks ago I was able to spend some time in Chicago at the National Restaurant Show. Times are tough, no doubt about it. The show certainly had fewer attendees than we have seen in the past. Some of the booths and exhibits were scaled down. Of course some businesses chose to skip the show completely. But, here’s the thing: when we stop learning, when we stop investing in our future growth, when we stop making sacrifices for the sake of improvement we are on our way to extinction. I am willing to bet that the companies and individuals who chose to attend this year in spite of the sacrifices that participation entailed are going to recover much faster than the those who were paralyzed by fear or simply lacked the motivation to attend.

The choices that we make, in the way that we spend our time, energy and rescources, will reveal what is really important to us. My good friend Scott, who owns Scott’s Pizza Tours in New York spends his vacation time doing things like visiting coal mines to better understand the fuel that fired early pizza ovens. He studies census records to learn about immigrant lifestyles. He grows tomatoes to understand the agricultural process.  In short he has made a commitment to mastery of his subject of interest. I guarantee he knows more about pizza than most of the folks who are baking pies for a living, and in the process has probably learned quite a bit about himself as well.

In every field, those who have excelled are the people who have gotten obsessed and stayed obsessed. The great thing is that if you have chosen a field that you truly love, the efforts will not seem like sacrifices at all. The commitment will be a labor of love and every twist and turn will be part of a wonderful adventure.