By now most of us have lost hope on our billion dollar bracket, as our March Madness brackets are inked with RED.  Hey, at least we took a shot, right?

But looking back at the underdog teams like the Dayton Flyers, I can’t help but think to myself, how could they, against all odds, make it so unexpectedly far?  It’s safe to say a majority of people picked Dayton’s opponents early on to move to the next round, not Dayton.

Despite the cards being stacked against these underdog teams, though, many of them pressed on, further than most of us expected.

It brings us to an important reality: so often we are wrong about who or what will succeed.  We get caught up focusing on who “should” win that we forget to live “in the game”.  Each team, like each of us, faces moments when they must come to play, put their best foot forward, and compete for their goals.  

But what if each team played according to how much others believed in their ability to win? We surely wouldn’t be shaking our heads at our destroyed brackets.

More importantly, though, what if we achieved only as far as others believed we could?

Life for us is like March Madness.  When others hear of our goals and dreams, they often times place “bets” on the likelihood of us achieving these goals and dreams.  Sure, we may never know what they truly think, but what if their “bet” drove our outcome? 

We’d rarely succeed if our success depended on what other people thought of our dreams.  Lucky for us, we don’t let the “bets” others place on us determine the course of our future.

Others can “bet” (and they will!), but we will set goals and align our actions to meet those goals despite what anyone has stacked against us.

We can’t allow someone’s wager on us to determine if we will or will not succeed. 

We’ve got to work for our goals and stay focused on what we believe we can achieve.  One of my favorite quotes says it best:

“If you go to work on your goals, your goals will go to work on you.”  -Jim Rohn