Once you have commitment, you need the discipline and hard work

The great runner of Ethiopia, Haile Gebrselassie, once declared with the fire of experience: “Once you have commitment, you need the discipline and hard work to get you there.” In this wisdom lies the eternal law of achievement—that the dream begins with commitment, but it is carried to fulfillment only by discipline and hard work. To vow is easy, to endure is divine.

For commitment is the spark, the oath of the heart that says, “I will.” Yet how many sparks die quickly in the wind! Without discipline, without the daily shaping of body and will, the dream remains a shadow, never made flesh. Gebrselassie, forged on the highlands and in the furnace of endless training, knew that it is not the promise but the perseverance that crowns the victor.

Discipline is the warrior’s armor, the chain that binds the soul to its path even when desire falters. It is rising when the body cries for rest, enduring when the spirit longs to surrender. Through discipline, the fleeting emotion of commitment becomes an unbreakable habit, and the dream moves from distant hope to inevitable reality.

Yet even discipline alone is not enough. It must be married to hard work, the sweat that waters the soil of destiny. Greatness is never handed down; it is carved out, step by step, mile by mile, with pain as companion and endurance as guide. Gebrselassie’s triumphs were not the gifts of talent alone, but the fruit of labor repeated beyond counting.

So let this truth be carried forward: commitment is the beginning, but without discipline and hard work, it is nothing but an empty vow. The one who dares to commit must also dare to labor, for in that labor lies transformation. And when discipline and toil are joined to vision, there is no height too great, no finish line too distant, no dream beyond reach.