If you want to excel at anything in life, you need to be committed. If you only want to be good enough to get by, then a commitment to excellence is not necessary. If you are committed to a cause, you don't need to tell anyone. They can tell from your actions.

I often wonder how people can be happy or at peace with themselves if they don't make a commitment to something, whether it be succeeding at work or improving a skill. How do you reconcile expecting desired results without giving an honest effort to be the best you can be?

I know that if you go into any endeavor and say you will give it a try to see if it works, your half-hearted effort will probably fail.

Alan Page, Pro Football Hall of Fame defensive tackle and Minnesota Supreme Court justice, said: "I grew up with the sense that if you're going to do something in life, do your best. When I was growing up, I didn't know what I wanted to be, what I would do, but I do remember being told, 'If you're going to be a garbage man, be the best garbage man you can be.' That stuck. If it's important to you and you want to be successful, there is only one person you can look at as being responsible for success or failure. That's you."

Wanting something and actually making a commitment to getting it are two different things. Your goals may be big and worthy, but do you have the passion to see them through? Success starts with a road map and a strategy; that's just the beginning. You must be prepared to see the action plan through -- making a commitment to get to the finish line.

To determine whether you are honestly prepared to make a commitment, Rosabeth Moss Kanter of the Harvard Business School suggests testing yourself with these questions:

-- Do you feel strongly about the importance of your goal -- why it's necessary to achieve?

-- Does your idea match your values and beliefs?

-- Is this something you've dreamed about for a long time?

-- Is your goal vital to the future of people you care about?

-- Does your goal get you excited when you think about it and share it with others?

-- Is it realistic? Are you sincerely convinced that your goal can be achieved?

-- Are you willing to put your credibility on the line for it?

-- Can you make your goal the primary focus of your activities?

-- Are you willing to devote your personal time -- evenings, weekends, vacations -- to bringing your goal to reality?

-- Will you be able to reject criticism and negativity?

-- Are you committed to the long term as you work toward your goal?

If you can answer yes to those questions, your chances for success improve dramatically. It's the difference between wanting and succeeding.

NBA star LeBron James, four-time league MVP, NBA champion and Olympic gold medalist, has made a commitment to playing his best and in being a good citizen both on and off the court.

James sums it up this way: "Commitment is a big part of what I am and what I believe. How committed are you to winning? How committed are you to being a good friend? To being trustworthy? To being successful? How committed are you to being a good father, a good teammate, a good role model? There's that moment every morning when you look in the mirror: Are you committed, or are you not?"

If you still doubt the importance of commitment, consider this story.

At 6:50 p.m., as evening fell in Mexico City in 1968, John Stephen Akhwari of Tanzania painfully hobbled into the Olympic stadium -- the last man to finish the punishing marathon race. The victory ceremony for the winning runner was long over and the stadium was almost empty as Akwari – his leg bloody and bandaged -- struggled to circle the track to cross the finish line.

Watching from a distance was Bud Greenspan, a documentary filmmaker famous for his Olympic movies. Intrigued, Greenspan walked over to the exhausted Akwari and asked why he had continued the grueling run to the finish line.

The young man from Tanzania did not have to search for an answer. He said: "My country did not send me 5,000 miles to start the race. They sent me 5,000 miles to finish the race."

Mackay's Moral: Commit or quit ... it's up to you.

I've been writing this nationally syndicated column for 21 years now, and it seems that the Mackay's Morals I create for each one really stick with the readers. Every three years, I dedicate a whole column to some of my most memorable morals:

-- No one is as important as all of us.

-- Gratitude should be a continuous attitude.

-- Killing time isn't murder; it's suicide.

-- Hidden talents don't have to be huge, but the results can be.

-- Open a book ... open your mind.

-- Life is a lot easier if you always play by the rules.

-- We all have to grow up, but we never have to get old.

-- Corporate integrity begins with personal integrity.

-- "We" is a little word that sends a big message.

-- People don't care how much you know about them once they realize how much you care about them.

-- The most successful managers aim at making themselves unnecessary to their staff.

-- Critical thinking is critical to success.

-- The only person who can put limits on your imagination is you.

-- It's not enough to know what. You must also know how.

-- Your mind is your most powerful ally in developing confidence.

-- If you go the extra mile, you will almost always beat the competition.

-- Doing the right thing is never the wrong thing to do.

-- There is one thing more contagious than enthusiasm, and that is the lack of enthusiasm.

-- A student of life considers the world a classroom.

-- People are judged by the company they keep. Companies are judged by the people they keep.

-- If seeing is believing, visualizing is achieving.

-- Creativity, not necessity, is the true mother of invention.

-- They say a word to the wise is sufficient, but I say a word from the wise is a gift!

-- If you don't climb the mountain, you can't see the view.

-- There is no such thing as a final offer.

-- An old dog can learn new tricks, and a new dog can learn old tricks.

-- Failure is not falling down but staying down.

-- Customer service is not a department, it's everyone's job.

-- Saying you're sorry and showing you're sorry are not the same thing.

-- Exercise your brain so your memory doesn't get flabby.

-- An ounce of commitment is worth pounds of promises.

-- Most people strive to be better off, but few strive to be better.

-- If you want to make your mark, sharpen your skills.

-- Everyone wants to win, but most people are not willing to prepare to win.

-- The fool asks the wise for advice, but the wise ask the experienced.

-- Pride is the stone over which many people stumble.

-- Control your life or it will control you.

-- The hardest part of the sale is selling yourself to your customer.

-- Entrepreneurship is living a few years of your life like most people won't, so that you can spend the rest of your life like most people can't.

-- To get what you've never had, you must do what you've never done.

-- You'll never lose credibility if you share the credit.

-- Happiness can be thought, taught and caught -- but not bought.

-- Failure isn't final unless you say it is.

-- People aren't strangers if you've already met them. The trick is to meet them before you need their help.

-- We may not be able to predict the future, but we can prepare for it.

-- A plan isn't a plan until you have a backup plan.

-- Taking your time can sometimes be the best use of your time.

-- If a business knows what's good for it, it knows what's good for a customer.

-- You can't get ahead if you don't get started.

-- Worrying casts a dark shadow that blocks any glimmer of hope.

-- The best way to sound like you know what you're talking about is to know what you're talking about.

-- Stay on your toes or fall flat on your face.

-- You'll never reach your goal if you don't have one.

-- Start every day/year with a healthy dose of vitamin C -- Creativity.

-- Taking care of employees is taking care of business.

-- Lots of people start, but few people finish.

Mackay's Moral: (one more time) The smarter I get, the more I realize I'm not finished learning.

About a month ago my column featured useful lessons learned from animals. It certainly touched a nerve, as I received tremendous response from people who told me about what they had learned from their dogs, cats and pets of all descriptions.

Over the years I've used a lot of animal analogies because 1) life lessons come from many sources, and 2) you don't have to name names. Here is round two.

-- Personal growth: The Japanese carp is commonly known as the koi. If you keep it in a small fish bowl, it will only grow to be 2 or 3 inches long. Place the koi in a larger tank or small pond and it will reach 6 to 10 inches. Put it in a large pond and it may get as long as a foot and a half. And when placed in a huge lake where it can really stretch out, it has the potential to reach sizes up to 3 feet. The size of the fish is in direct relation to the size of the pond.

Relate that growth to people. Our growth is determined by the size of our world -- not the Earth's measurable dimensions, but the mental, emotional, spiritual and physical opportunities we expose ourselves to.

Lesson: Unless we expand who we are, we'll never have more than what we have now.

-- Teamwork vs. ego: The danger of excessive pride or an excessive ego is evident in the story of the hitchhiking frog.

A frog asked two geese to take him south with them. At first they resisted; they didn't see how it could be done. But the frog suggested that the two geese hold a stick in their beaks that he could hold on to with his mouth.

So off they flew. People marveled at this demonstration of creative teamwork. That is, until someone asked: "Who was so clever to discover such a fine way to travel?"

Whereupon the frog opened his mouth and said, "It was I," and plummeted to the earth.

Lesson: If you want to take the credit, you also have to take the lumps.

-- Inability to let go: An expedition of scientists was on a mission to capture a particular species of monkey in the jungles of Africa. It was important that the monkeys be brought back alive and unharmed.

Using their knowledge of monkey behavior, the scientists devised a trap consisting of a small jar with a long, narrow neck with a handful of nuts placed inside. Several of these jars were staked out, while the scientists returned to their camp, confident of catching the monkeys.

Scenting the nuts in the bottle, a monkey would thrust his paw into the long neck of the jar and take a fistful of nuts. But when he tried to withdraw the prize, he discovered that his clenched fist would not pass through the narrow neck of the bottle. So he was trapped in the anchored bottle, unable to escape with his treasure, and yet unwilling to let it go. When the scientists returned, they easily took the monkeys captive.

Lesson: Sometimes letting go means a much greater gain.

-- Competitiveness: Have you noticed how many dead squirrels you see on the roadside in summer and how few you see during the winter?

In summer, nuts are plentiful, and it's easy for even the slowest squirrel to survive. The squirrels get fat and lazy and cars pick them off one by one.

In winter, things are just the opposite. Nuts are few and far between and they must hustle to survive. The fat and lazy squirrels have all gone to their maker. The survivors are sleek, fast and smart. Few cars catch them unaware.

Lesson: Businesses that become complacent and stop trying their hardest leave themselves vulnerable to predators that soon put an end to their wellbeing.

-- Danger of Greed: An old method of catching wild turkeys can be an excellent lesson to all of us. To trap the turkeys, corn was scattered on the ground. Then a net was stretched about 2 feet high over the grain. When the wild turkeys sensed that no human was near, they would approach the corn and lower their heads to eat it.

When they became full and tried to leave, they lifted their heads and were immediately caught in the net.

Lesson: Don't fall into the trap of thinking you can get something for nothing.

Mackay's Moral: Be kind to animals -- they teach us great lessons.