“Have utmost concern for what’s right rather than who is right.” John Wooden How did the human race become top of the food chain? How did we find ourselves in this position, where we have completely transformed the world, leaving our mark in every continent. We not only beat out stronger, faster and more aggressive animals, we also beat out other human species to be the lone human species on earth. How did that happen? It happen for many different reasons, however two stick out in my mind as most important. Firstly we were able to break down complex problems, and build tools to allow us to overcome these problems. Imagine the board meetings held to discuss the products needed to take down a wooly mammoth!!!!! Secondly, we developed the understanding of co-operation. We quickly learned that if we work together, and use the tools we built to create a solution, we could be ultimately successful. We therefore became better hunters, we created settlements with a shared purpose and defined roles that benefited the whole colony. Hunters hunted, farmers farmed and so on. This cooperation was born out of survival, however it’s necessity is still prevalent in the relative safety of our modern world. In this very safe bubble of Western society, where the most people look after number one, it appears that we have lost the want and the need to work together. Social media provides an illusion of togetherness and closeness to people, however depression and social anxiety is growing. The World Health Organisation is currently saying that the most common form of illness in the next 20 years is going to be depression. We have it all, seemingly, however we are missing something fundamental. I see it constantly when coaching basketball and in the work environment. The willingness to work together with somebody for mutual benefit seems all but lost. We need human connections to enable us to thrive personally, however we seem to have lost this understanding. We need each other as much now as we did when we were hunting mammoths. So, what can we do to develop a cooperative mindset, so we can truly work to not only our own advantage, but the advantage of others? We live in a world of quick hits and life hacks. Click this button for 2,000 instagram followers, do this for instant radiant looking skin, get a six pack in a week!!!! These are the messages being seen by millions of us daily over all the social media platforms. The message is slowly sinking in that we don’t have to try, we don’t need anyone else’s help, what we need to do is send £9.99 in order to receive this special, once in a lifetime fix that will make you awesome. This is in true opposition to what is needed to create cooperation. Cooperation takes time, patience, communication and time (I know I have said time twice). The problem is we don’t take the time to actually work out how or (even more importantly why) we should work together. Let us look at a couple of scenarios where we are introduced to new potential partners. In different aspects of our lives we act very differently to meeting new people, and my main question is should we? The first scenario is the job interview. In the modern day job interview the competency based interview reigns supreme. In this interview you spend hours developing your CV or application form to convince your potential employer that you have all the correct skills, honed through all the right workplace experience to be able to deliver the work required. Then you spend an indiscriminate amount of time meeting your potential employers face to face and reiterating your amazing skills and the amazing work you have completed with these skills. You tell them you are a team player that can work on your own initiative and you can use all Microsoft Office software. You get offered the job, start work, and six months down the line everyone realises that you don’t fit into the team, you are unhappy with your work and you spend more energy fighting the establishment and your boss than you do being creative, productive and happy. Why is this? For me, the whole employment process focused on what you can do and how do you do it, rather than looking at why you want the work, why you would work passionately and diligently everyday and why you would be a good colleague. You may have the skills, but you have personality traits, or points of view, or behaviours that will not make you friends in the team you will be working with. Contrast this with a first date. On a first date you spend the whole time trying to find out about the other person. Their family history, where they grew up, what they like and don’t like and what they are passionate about. You spend the time getting to know them, at least at a superficial level. You are trying to make an educated guess at whether or not you would like to spend more time with this person. You do this through story telling, showing pictures of your family and sharing your dreams. Sometimes you decide after the first date, no thank you, we would not work, sometimes it takes a few dates to decide this and sometimes we look back smiling 10 years later, mortgaged to the hilt, with three children nipping your heals for cinema money, more chocolate and another new toy. The point here is when we are on our first date we are laying the foundations of cooperation, we are asking the pertinent questions that allow us to decide whether this person is worth spending more time with. We are looking at aligning our values. So what can we take away from all this? I believe the following are all very important aspects to building and maintain a cooperative relationship, whether it is at home, at work, in our friendships or when we play sport:
In the modern world cooperation is something that everybody talks about, but very few actually do. It is a skill that is becoming a lost art, however it is one that should be cherished, developed and grown. It is vital for our survival. So go out there, cooperate, create and grow. Peace and happiness.
0 Comments
‘Be true to yourself. Be true to those you lead.’ John Wooden In my previous post in this John Wooden Pyramid of Success series, I wrote about loyalty from a personal perspective. The premise being that in order to be loyal to others you need to start with being loyal to who you are first. Being loyal to yourself with respect to how you train your brain, how you prepare your body and how you tend to your spiritual life are all very important components to being able to show loyalty to others in your life. If this is the first blog post you have read by me you can find part one of this blog post here. So why does loyalty to others matter at home, in sports, in our personal relationships and in work? Well, as the title suggests loyalty can act like a currency and be the platform for positive business decisions, growth of a friendship, winning or losing in a sports setting and a happy relationship with your loved one and family. Like finances you need to trade in loyalty carefully because it can take a long time to build up a solid loyalty reserve, but once you spend it, it is gone and is very hard to get back. You need to be careful with how you use it, you need to show it your respect and you need to use it wisely, or else you will find yourself out in the cold looking in. However, I am not talking about loyalty in the way that Trump views it. It has been alledged that Trump has repeatedly asked for loyalty from people like Comey, the former FBI Director. The press has been awash with Comey’s public testimoney that Trump repeatedly asked for his loyalty in their now famous private dinner. As Comey tried to explain to the President he would be honest with him, not personally loyal. What Trump was asking for here was loyalty to him personally, loyalty to his needs. Not loyalty to the American people. This type of loyalty is wrong, it is incorrect, it is perverted and it does not build an open and honest working relationship that would not allow Comey, in his role as the head of the Federal Bureau of Investigation, to carry out his role impartially. If Trump were any sort of leader he would have understood that Comey stating he would be honest with him was Comey showing loyalty not only to the American people, but also to the office that Trump not inhabits. Loyalty is not getting your own way from others to the detriment of others. It is not something you should, or can command from someone. It is something earned. When looking at loyalty in a more personal environment the most obvious form of loyalty (or at least the type of loyalty that is in the public domain most often) is not cheating on your partner. However loyalty runs much deeper than this in a personal relationship. Loyalty is pulling your weight, it is doing what you say you are going to do, it is putting family first, it is helping each member of your household to be happy and successful, it is about being consistent in all that you do. Loyalty in the home is very much about the small details. When I have conversations with other people at the school gates a lot of the conversations are based on when things don’t go right in the home. ‘He did not get up with the baby last night….she did not wash my work clothes so I am going to work in this….she did not buy the right coffee and now I haven’t had my caffeine hit…..he was out late last night with his pals again…..’. The list is endless, however each of these scenarios all have the same underlying issue, a specific routine or function has not been carried out to someone’s satisfaction. Ok, so this can happen from time to time, especially with babies and young children in the household. However, where has the loyalty been broken? For me it is the loyalty of the relationship itself. When we commit to one another we are committing to building a shared life that is better that the one either party could or would have on their own. At least that where we start. When we get a few years down the line and kids come along, and job promotions happen and we get a nice big house and people carriers we can lose sight of what we started in the first place. This ideal image of familial bliss has been eradicated and replaced with this messy, tiring, noisy tantrum filled, money draining reality that we were not prepared for. In this instance it is all too easy to take our focus off the dream of family bliss and focus on each and every small annoyance that happens in family life. The small things become the big things and all of a sudden we are being and thinking negatively about our families, our partners and the life we are trying to build. We have broken the loyalty of the family unit, the trust that we have built up with our wives and children because we are so focused on somewhere in the future when our children behave impeccably, our wives always wash our favorite pants first and our house is always tidy. By focusing on happiness being somewhere out there, in the future, we lose sight of the fact that happiness is a process. Happiness is in the detail. Happiness is right here and right now, not somewhere in the future. Once we understand that we can be loyal to our partners, our kids and our family unit and in that loyalty is where we find joy. So what about when we have a fight with a friend or partner? How can we be loyal to someone when we are in the thick of it arguing with them? Chade-Meng Tan, a former google employee and now a world leader in emotional intelligence shared in his 2012 book ‘Search inside Yourself’ how he deals with arguments in work and in the home. ‘Whenever I have a fight with my wife or a co-worker, I go to another room to calm down and after a few minutes of calming down, I do this exercise in stealth. I visualize the other person in the next room. I remind myself that this person is just like me, wants to be free from suffering just like me, wants to be happy just like me, and so on. And then I wish that person wellness, happiness, freedom from suffering, and so on. After just a few minutes of doing this, I feel much better about myself, about the other person, and about the whole situation. A large part of my anger dissipates immediately.’ He shows loyalty and respect to those in his life by removing himself briefly and going through a practiced routine that allows him to understand that the other person has the same wants and needs to be loved and happy and free from suffering. In the sports arena we have just seen the Golden State Warriors win their second championship in 3 years. This is a special group of basketball players, coaches and managers who have created a winning competitive environment that is built on care, compassion, joy and trust. I have written a previous article on this team, which you can find here. What is clear from player interviews after the final is the value all involved with the club place on loyalty. It was repeated by everyone interviewed that each player shows loyalty to each other and to the process of winning by how they turn up to train each day. They don’t skip any parts of the process and they spend time on the details. They sacrifice personal, individual glory for the wider team glory and they each do this in their own unique way. This team wins because of the collective strength they have, which is formed and solidified through a strong sense of loyalty to one another. In my time as a player and a coach I have been fortunate enough to have been on amazing teams, and have experienced the feeling of invincibility of being with a group of guys that I trusted 100%. It pulled us through in tough games, it helped us forgive when people made mistakes, it helped us play for each other and not against each other. The loyalty of those teams was often built up off the court, through social interactions, showing a care for each other and spending time getting to know one another. I have also been on teams that were filled with selfish, me first players. These teams always fell short and I could not wait to get out. Practice was not fun, there was no sense of enjoyment and motivation was low. As a coach I spend a large proportion of my time speaking to the players about sacrificing for the team, giving up their ego and instead feed into the team ego. A collective force that will help propel the players to a better place. However, working with young testosterone fuelled men can often mean that the team ego can very often be destroyed by something as simple as a bad pass or a miss timed shot. It is obvious that the loyalty capital has not been built up and will need some time to develop. So in your lives, as you move from home life to personal life to your hobbies be careful of how you are treating those around you. Work hard and diligently to build up a reserve of loyalty from friends and family that add value to your life. The currency of Loyalty will buy you happiness, self worth and joy, however it is in the act of loyalty that you will discover this. I was listening to the Tony Robbins Podcast today, the episode was called, 'Becoming an Extraordinary Leader' and was released on February 2nd 2017. This episode was an interview with General Stanley A. McChrystal and Chris Fussell, who both served with the American Army and had massively influential and important careers there. They now mentor businesses on leadership based on over 3 decades of experience leading men and women in some of the most hostile environments on the planet. General McChrystal gave some great information on the fundamentals of great modern leadership and how to keep your business on track in the modern world, when change is happening faster than ever before. The interview was packed with awesome nuggets of knowledge, however one such nugget really stuck with me and has kept me thinking all day about it. So I thought I would share it. General McChrystal described two very different styles of leadership with such simplicity it made them so clear and easy to understand. Firstly he explained that he has seen a lot of people lead like Chess Masters. He goes on to explain that Chess masters are in complete control of all their 16 chess pieces on the board. He moves one at a time, all the while plotting the next moves ahead. Reacting to his opponent, he is the one making all the decisions. The chess pieces do not make a decision, ever. They are all under his control and he is in complete command. Secondly he explained that modern leadership, when done well is like being a Gardener. A gardener does not actually grow any plants. The plants grow themselves. What the Gardener does is create the environment for the plants to grow. He turns to soil, gets rid of weeds, waters, prunes, feeds and generally looks after the garden. If he does his job right the garden will thrive and the plants will grow. I think this has stuck with me because it is so easy to be the Chess Master, our ego wants us to be in control and to be the one to be making all the moves. However this style of leadership is outdated and no longer produces results in the modern workplace, and it definitely does not work at home. It is stifling, and does not promote individual and team growth. No one in the team has the chance to use their decision making muscle therefore they stop using it. I now strive to be more like a Gardener in all aspects of my life. I want to create an environment for learning and growth. An environment like this is liberating, fun and full of energy. Not stifling and stuffy. It is important for me to create and maintain a healthy, growth mindset environment that allows my girls to want to learn, both in their education and life. My seven year old today was making pancakes, which my wife had taught her to do. She was doing the whole thing, making the batter, putting the batter in the pan, understanding when to flip the pancake and knowing when it was properly cooked. I was so proud to see her do this. I stayed well back, allowing her to stay in control, but stayed close enough to make sure she was using the gas and pancake safely, without burning herself. Getting her to approach her maths homework in the same way is challenging, but we are working together on that!!!!! In my basketball coaching I am working with young men aged 15-18. A potentially difficult age, as they seem to have all the answers. It is very important to create a supportive learning environment here, where mistakes are OK and an understanding that learning comes from making mistakes. Trying to blend the personality types, skill sets and hormones of this group is not easy and I often see myself as a guiding hand, rather than an iron fist. Next time a coach will see myself working away to clear out the weeds (or to put a better way, poor fundamentals), turning over the soil (working on skill development) and watering the plants (helping each player with coaching points and advice). I will make sure that the environment is relaxed, fun, engaging and challenging and I will work my hardest to allow the flowers (players) to grow. I will be a servant to their needs, in order to further their growth, not an all powerful decision maker cutting them down and stunting their growth. So, go out there and work on your gardens, your areas of influence, wherever that may be. Peace and Happiness. ‘Be true to yourself. Be true to those you lead.’ John Wooden Loyalty to me crosses all sections of your life, however it is grounded in a loyalty to yourself. Without being loyal to who you are you can not be real and authentic to your friends, family and those you lead in work. I have been on a rollercoaster ride since 1st December last year. I finished work with my previous employer on November 30th after taking voluntary severance and I have been looking for a new job ever since. Let me tell you, this is not an easy path to walk. The amount and the severity of the peaks and troughs of emotions I have been going through are so opposed that I find within short periods of time going from being elated, feeling things are going my way to feeling so down and depressed that I wish I could curl up in a ball and not deal with anything anymore. However I still have responsibilities to my wife and kids, to the basketball team I coach and to my other friends and family who are going through tough times of their own. I don’t think I would have survived the last couple of months without the loyalty of my wife, because the loyalty to myself has wavered, however I have finally made a conscious decision to go back to basics and begin to be loyal to myself once again. By being disloyal to myself I found that I was not exercising, I was not writing and I was not eating very well. All these things I was not doing have massive benefits for self esteem, energy and my own self worth. My spiritual life suffered also, but again I have recommitted myself to getting these things right, so I can get the rest of my life sorted. In this article I will discuss how being loyal to yourself will give you the foundation to move forward and be successful. I want to take the time to explore being loyal to yourself before moving on and looking at loyalty to others. This will therefore be a two part article which I will cover over the next couple of weeks. Ok, let’s get stuck in then…. Loyalty to yourself For me being loyal to yourself comes in three parts. Being loyal to your mind, to your body and to your soul. All three are interconnected and when one suffers so do the others. The late, reknowned yoga teacher B.K.S Iyengar wrote, ‘The rhythm of the body, the melody of the mind and the harmony on the soul create the symphony of life.’ What great words. In an orchestra if the brass section are too loud they will drown out the wood winds, or if the drum section is not in time they will disrupt the beauty of the music that is being played. As the conductor pulls all the different sections of the orchestra together so must you conduct the symphony of your own existence. So let's explore this a bit further. The Mind I did not read for enjoyment until much later in my life. It was in my third year at university that I started to read for enjoyment. I was taught for the first time at university how to search for information, how to make sense of all the information I was gathering and how to sensibly report this information in a succinct way. When I reflect on my high school learning I often feel this was a massive failing in my education as it took me a couple of years at university to grasp these research skills and to utilise them properly. Once I got it there was no going back. Ever since then I have had a thirst for knowledge and reading became something that was fun and enjoyable, and not just a chore. I am a slow reader, so imagine my pleasure when I found out about podcasts and started listening to these on my car journeys. With great podcasts from inspirational people like Tony Robbins, Lewis Howes and Michael Gervais I can now feed my mind whilst driving my car, listening and learning from a diverse field of experts. New ideas, new ways of thinking, new perspectives on life. It is all there, all accessible to me in a format that really benefits my style of learning. For learning is the important thing, whether I learn from articles on my Flipboard feed, from a new book or a podcast, or simply seeing something on my way to dropping the kids at school, it really doesn’t matter. What matters is that I am engaging my mind, taking time to think and explore new ideas and then working out how to implement these ideas for the betterment of myself and those around me. Engaging the mind, and keeping it agile is so important with recent studies showing the long term health benefits of doing so. I find when there are periods when I am not reading before bed, when I am not reading regularly and when I am not taking time to think and contemplate, other aspects of life are more demanding. The brain is a muscle and needs to be trained, regularly and often. So start being true to yourself and go out there and start reading, thinking, taking in information and learning. Exercise the mind muscle and everything else will fall into place. With the mind it is also equally important to talk to yourself in a kind way. It is so easy to be negative to ourselves and I have had to learn, on my own, how to talk to myself in a positive manner. I have had to learn what truly is important and worth me getting upset about and what is not important and should not take up any time in my thoughts. Our brains are pre-wired to sort and deal with negative (and potentially threatening) thoughts or stimuli first. This is an evolutionary way for us to kick into fight or flight mode in order to deal with danger. For our cave dwelling ancestors it was important to know when you were under threat and to quickly respond to it. Due to the rate we have developed the world around us to make life more comfortable and less dangerous our brains have not adapted to allow for our safer lifestyle, and therefore our poor brains spend countless hours worrying about someone’s latest status update, what some celebrity said or what did that person really mean in that text. In this instance evolution is not helping us as we spend so much time sitting on our bums, stuck to our phone worrying about things that actually hold no real threat to us. Although we are hard wired to search for the negative there is good news. Our brain muscle can be trained, over time to be more positive, therefore making us generally more optimistic. The even better news is that this training can all be done for free. Ways in which we can train our brain to become more focused on the positive are:
By being more conscious of your thoughts you can start to check the negative thoughts that come into your head and quickly start to challenge ones that you don’t like. For me, I have always been quite judgemental, so I have been on a journey of listening to my thoughts and challenging mean spirited and negative ones. The result, for me, is a quieter, happier mind with clearer and more positive thought patterns. As I said before though, the brain is a muscle and needs to be trained, therefore it is important to constantly be on top of your thoughts and work to be more grounded and mindful. The Body Being loyal to your body is equally as important as being loyal to the mind. The body is a very complicated machine, however it is a brilliant adapter. If you decide to drive to work, sit at your desk all day, drive home and sit on the sofa all night, your body will adapt to this lifestyle. Posture quickly becomes poor, energy levels reduce and positive hormones dry up and get released less often and in less amounts. However exercising the body will cause it to quickly adapt too. Our bodies are made to get us from A to B in the most efficient way possible and due to our current lifestyle the efficiency of the machine is often reduced by how we choose to move, or in many cases not move. When moved right and fueled right the body becomes a self perpetuating motor. Exerting the body through exercise will build endurance, strength and ability, which in turn allows the body to do more. The more you put in the more you will get out. Exercising releases chemicals in the body, such as dopamine, that benefits the mind and produces feelings of acceptance and happiness. I find that when I exercise I am more able and willing to do the house work, tidy the garage and generally am more productive. I also have a more positive outlook on life and am better able to take on any of the small challenges life throws at me. Actually feeling strong and flexible in itself makes me feel better. The mind and body are inextricably linked and therefore looking after one will look after the other. So get out there and exercise. The bad news about exercise is it takes effort and willpower. The benefits are too much for you to not exercise, so my advice to you is to make it as easy as possible. I hate wasting time, so I work out at home. I either start a run or cycle from my front door and finish there. That means I can jump straight into the shower and then get on with the rest of my day. I also love kettlebell classes, but I hate having to get in my car, drive to the gym, get changed, do the work out, get in the shower and then get home. A 45 minute workout takes over an hour and a half from start to finish. I therefore went and bought a couple of kettlebells and I use videos on youtube (my favorites being Fitness Blender) and I do my workouts in my bedroom. Even better I do them in my pants so I not only save time and money, I also only have a pair of pants to wash after my workout. Win, win, win for me here!!!! My point here is that to be fit you don’t have to buy into the multimillion pound industry that really only wants your money. Think of ways in which you can get your fitness buzz with less cost and with less time constraints. The Spirit I find that this is often the elephant in the room. I live in central Scotland where spirituality is almost a taboo subject. Most people do not want to think about it, never mind speak about it. I often find also that spirituality and faith in something bigger than oneself is often confused with religion. When you start to speak about any form of spirituality a lot of people that I have worked with or am acquainted with instantly think about church. Their gut reaction is fear and therefore the discussion ends. What are they afraid of? Normally they are afraid of what they experienced at church when they were younger, or they have never been to church, but their parents spoke negatively about because they had bad experiences when they were young. Many people in central Scotland experienced church that was often boring, stuffy, full of ritual and does not easily relate to living life today. Why listen to stories about some guys thousands of years ago who went round fighting each other and then sing dreary boring songs, and then where does this Jesus guy sit with all this? I feel that this reaction is all too common here in Scotland and unfortunately most people decide that they don’t even want to spend time thinking about this stuff. Which is a shame. This coupled with people believing your belief system should rest either with science or spirituality has left a lot of people spiritually void. Carl Sagan wrote, ‘Science is not only compatible with spirituality; it is a profound source of spirituality.’ Rather than being confrontational science and spirituality are actually intertwined inexplicably. For me spirituality is vitally important as it is our spirituality that feeds our soul. However it is more than that, our spirituality is our way of making sense of where we are from, how the universe began, how we have evolved, how we should interact with each other and how we should help build a better future for everyone on the planet. I am a Christian, it is through this paradigm that I explore all the questions I have just posed and I feel this framework helps me understand all this. My loyalty to this tradition and my faith in God helps keep me grounded when times are good and helps pick me up when things don’t go well. My faith helps me try to understand other people’s points of view and I don’t use it as a way to separate and show how much better I am than others (which a lot of people do!!!). As with the mind and the body, spirituality is to be practiced and built up over time. Each of us has a spirituality muscle inside of us that we need to flex and train. So my challenge to you is to go and train your spirituality. Now let me be very clear here, what I am not saying is that I want you to believe everything I believe, or else you are wrong. What I am saying is go and do some research, do some reading, have conversations exploring your beliefs and make sure that whatever you believe you actually believe. Don’t just say you believe something that you really haven’t given any thought to. You may end up believing something similar to me, or you may end up with a different conclusion, but at least give it some thought. A lot of people say they are atheist, however they don’t actually know what that means. They haven’t given the time to explore and understand what they mean by this. Conversely a lot of people say they are Christians, Buddhists, Muslims (and the list goes on), however similarly they have not fully explored this internally. It may be part of their family or social culture, so they do all the ritual, but don’t delve into the spiritual application of their faith. Ok, now that we are all sorted and have a strong and aligned mind, body and soul the next article will explore how this should influence your personal and work relationships. I appreciate that this article does not delve into any real depth in the subjects mentioned, but is meant to start you thinking about these things in order to go and formulate your own thoughts and actions off the back of this article. So please join me next week when we will start to look at how loyalty to yourself is expressed in the loyalty shown to those around you in your different walks of life. Peace and Happiness. I would like to invite you all along to my first ever workshop as the Leadership Thread. I have decided to deliver a workshop to help people move into management/leadership roles for the first time in their career. This will be a fun and insightful workshop that will help each candidate develop their own career road map and will give them intersting things to consider and think about as they start to explore moving into a new role or job.
When I moved into management I made so many mistakes and suffered for these mistakes. The bad news is that those I managed also suffered. I had to go back to basics and learn how to lead a team of people and I often wished that I had been given the opportunity to learn about the good and the bad bits about being a manager/leader. That is why I have created this workshop, so that others people are at least aware of what lies ahead if and when they take the step into management. Please click here for the workshop details and booking page. I hope to see many of you there. Thanks, Andy. “Your energy, enjoyment, drive and determination will stimulate and greatly inspire others.” John Wooden. With 30 seconds to go in a league game against our bitter rivals we were down by 6 points and our team captain was standing with his hands on his knees, utterly spent. He had nothing left to give. Only two minutes previously we were down 20 points and our opponents looked like they were getting a comfortable win. Our captain’s effort, his tenacity and his will inspired the rest of the team to suddenly wake up and go for it. With a nothing to lose attitude the team left everything on the floor. We did not win the game, but because of our captain’s infectious enthusiasm we scared our opponents and made them work for the victory. We may not have won the game, but I was very proud of our players. Their attitude was faultless and although the scoreline reflected a loss, we left the court as winners in our own eyes. We showed character, grit and determination. We mirrored the enthusiasm of our captain. In all walks of life it is important to tackle everything with a level of enthusiasm that will inspire others to act. Enthusiasm is the antidote for apathy. It quashes negativity. It outlasts laziness. The Cambridge dictionary describes enthusiasm as, “an energetic interest in a particular subject or activity and an eagerness to be involved in it.” The key words for me in this definition is that enthusiasm involves energy and an eagerness. When you are enthusiastic towards something it shows a genuine interest, you are giving respect to whatever it is that you are being enthusiastic about. You are positively affirming not only the activity, but your involvement in the activity. This positivity is infectious and you can and will draw others into your enthusiasm. We have all had those down in the dumps bosses, who literally suck the life out of everything. They make work a chore, everything has a negative slant to it, nothing is interesting and all work is boring and unsatisfying. As much as this is true I am sure that we have all had those bosses who make everything achievable, you gladly go the extra mile and you do it with a smile. The difference in these two types of leader is the display of enthusiasm. It truly is transformative. John Wooden taught his teams to be enthusiastic, by being passionate towards how he coached the game. However he also engendered his self propelling energy to his teams by influencing their behaviours so that his teams became self perpetuating enthusiasm machines. Small things like running into timeouts (a stop in play in basketball to discuss strategy), or never being late, or learning to complete each drill correctly, how to behave in practice and in games and how to communicate effectively with team-mates. Like it benefitted his teams on the basketball court enthusiasm can benefit you at work, home or at play in a range of different ways. However you have to be careful, mindful and attentive in order to create and nurture an enthusiastic environment. Enthusiasm Needs Energy but it Creates Energy You know you have all been there….sitting looking at your computer, about to start a piece of work, however you find loads of other things to do instead of starting the work you need to do. Procrastinating in this way is very normal and is difficult to avoid unless you have some motivation to get started, like a deadline. However once you overcome the procrastination and get stuck into the work you often find yourself engrossed, enjoying what you are doing and ploughing your way through it. When faced with something you think you will find boring or uninteresting your enthusiasm wanes. To be productive in work you need to give your enthusiasm some fuel to get you going, however once you get going and you get into the activity your enthusiasm can become self perpetuating. Daringtolivefully.com suggests you, ‘Make sure that you have the physical energy to be able to generate lots of enthusiasm by getting enough sleep, eating healthy food, and getting regular exercise.’ Other ways to fuel enthusiasm is to find something in the work you are doing that you are curious to find out about or test, you can motivate yourself by setting goals, have prizes for reaching goals like a cup of tea or a walk outside, or the promise of some more interesting work later in the day once the boring stuff is completed. Also think about the motivation to exercise. I know I struggle to find the energy to exercise, however I always feel so much better after I do exercise, and strangely seem to have more energy!!!! Once you get into a run of three or four days exercise it seems easier to motivate yourself to do more exercise, again the enthusiasm for the task starts to self perpetuate. Once I am doing my workout I enjoy it, it is getting going that we all find difficult. Again you have all probably experienced the same as me, that once you get some momentum it is a lot easier to keep going. For me as a dad of three girls I have often struggled to get enthusiastic about playing with dolls, or tea parties or princess games. However I realise that it is so important for my daughter's development that I do it. By playing make believe games like this it is helping them develop their imagination and problem solving abilities. It helps teach them how to socialise properly and allows them to learn to be more empathetic towards others. As in the examples above once I get into the games it is hard not to get caught up in the enthusiasm displayed by my girls and before I know it I am have a great time drinking imaginary tea and talking about how the princesses unicorn got stolen by the naughty troll. I really feed off the energy of my girls and once I lose my inhibitions and engage with them fully I can see them buzzing off me being involved. It is amazing. Enthusiasm Creates Momentum So as has been described above enthusiasm creates momentum. It helps build a head of steam, it creates a dynamic atmosphere that allows other people to come along for the ride. I have seen this a lot in team settings at work and in sports. More often than not the team outwardly displaying an enthusiasm for the sport in which they are taking part tend to be the victors. Enthusiasm can enhance performance and can help players build positive momentum. I have been in meeting rooms buzzing with excitement as colleagues are bouncing ideas back and forth, problem solving and moving the project forward. The enthusiasm to complete the task/project is palpable. There is a positive energy that is infectious and can spread throughout a team like wild fire. There are a number of factors that influence this growth and development of an enthusiastic atmosphere. There must be a no blame culture, team members have to feel included and involved. it must be a ridicule free zone and communications need to open, honest and non-confrontational. There are no silly answers, there is no judgement. Any and all inputs into meeting or the activity are valid and worthy of discussion. Enthusiasm Needs to be Nurtured The important thing to note is that even though enthusiasm can catch fire and allow you and teammates to work at a high rate in a state of positivity and togetherness, this can all be undone very easily and very quickly. Negativity can kill enthusiasm in an instant and can make it very hard to recover. In team sports one dissenting voice can destroy the positivity and enthusiasm of a team. The same can be said in an office environment. In a marriage or partnership negative quips, snide remarks or sarcastic humour can very quickly lead to a breakdown in the relationship. Enthusiasm therefore needs to be nurtured. This is done by developing positive cultural norms that are widely accepted and practiced. These cultural norms can include body language, reactions to situations, verbal communications, generally how you treat one another. To instill and maintain a positive culture the whole organisation needs to buy into it and all levels of the organisation need to live within this culture, no person is exempt. Even the big boss(es). Everyone is accountable, everyone has a role to play, everyone has a responsibility to ensure the culture continues to develop and grow. Everyone is personally responsible for putting in the required practices that will allow for a positive and enthusiastic culture, be it at home, at play or in the office. So please go out there into your lives and inspire others by your actions, show off your determination, energy and drive. Create a microclimate of positivity around you that will influence those around you to do the same. Peace and happiness people. Introduction:
Last week I posted John Wooden’s Pyramid of Success and a short video in which he describes the difference between winning and success. John Wooden firmly believed that success comes from knowing that you did your utmost and put in the work to make sure you performed the best you possibly could. I am paraphrasing the great man here, and therefore am not doing as good a job, however hopefully you still get his meaning of success. Winning to Wooden was different. Wooden believed that sometimes his teams may have won the basketball game, however in his eyes they lost. When his teams did not put in the effort, or display the right behaviours on a way to a win he would view this as a loss. The converse was also true to him. At times his teams may have lost the game, however the effort, sportsmanship and manner in which his team lost filled him with pride and allowed him to see this as a victory. Can we look at our wins and losses in life with such integrity and dignity? I would love to say yes, but sadly I know that I fall short. Listening to a recent John Wooden interview, reading about the man and returning to his pyramid of success after a number of years has re-ignited a genuine interest in the man and exploring his thoughts, passions and beliefs. Therefore I am going to use the next few blog posts to go into a bit more detail on the different blocks of the pyramid of success. I truly am standing on the shoulder of a giant here and I want to be very clear that I am not trying to mimic John Wooden in any way, rather I am looking to explore the different blocks within the pyramid and reflect on how these can impact our personal leadership in the different aspects of our lives. I hope that this is an interesting exploration into the fundamental attributes that made John Wooden and everyone he influenced very successful. Let us begin!!!!! The first block and one of the cornerstones to the Pyramid of Success is Industriousness, or to put it simply hard work. John Wooden said, ‘Success travels in the company of very hard work. There is no trick, no easy way.’ When reflecting on this block there are four clear benefits to putting in the hard work. Hard Work Trumps Talent….in the Long Run The work of Carol Dewek on the talent myth has greatly changed how the education system in Scotland is aiming to develop children as they learn and grow into adulthood. The belief that the is no such thing as talent, rather a propensity of some individuals to be better at a certain thing than others, has made the education system look at how it is treating those previously perceived as being talented, or adversely not talented. The myth of talent was arrived to by Dewek when she was exploring why early high achievers often regressed and often became average as they grew towards adulthood. This phenomenon was noticed in topics like maths and science as well as in the sports arena. Tony Stanger has been working for the last decade on this very thing within sports. We all know the kid at 10 who was the captain of the football, rugby and athletics team and seemed to be able to master any sport he/she tried. However this same kid has time and again been caught up with and even overtaken by their peers. Why is this? What Dewek and Stanger conclude is that effort is the deciding factor. The common factor that almost any successful person will tell you is hard work. Whether you are the most successful architect, lawyer, businessman (or woman), mother, father, athlete, the common factor that has put you on top of the pedestal is hard work. Generally if you put in the graft you will find success. That is not to say that you will always win, always get to the top. However, the hard work will allow you to open the conversations with others that will help you navigate to the top of whatever profession you are climbing. Your mindset determines your effort and if you look at difficulties as challenges to overcome, rather than road blocks, you will allow yourself to become more successful. Hard work is the foundation for success. In sports you can not expect to go into competition without preparing properly. If you do not practice in the correct fashion and put in the sweat time you will not prepare yourself for the rigours of competition. If you don’t work on your relationships they will fatigue and grow weary very quickly. If you don’t prepare, gain the correct knowledge and understand how to carry out your job you won’t last long in that role. Put in the hard work, especially after a big win, because hard work will always trump talent in the long run. You Will Revert to Type Under Pressure I have seen it all to often in the office and on the basketball court. When stress comes people will revert to type. What I mean by this is that we all have a default safety blanket. When moments of stress happen we return to these safety blankets and the usual result is failure. Now that failure can manifest itself in many different ways. The best way I can describe this to you is through a sporting analogy. When teaching someone to shoot the basketball a massive amount of patience is needed, especially when you are trying to weed out any fundamentally poor aspects of someone’s jump shot. A jump shot is a whole body action that includes every part of the body, from the feet to the fingertips. Due to this it is a very complex skill to teach and master. When teaching someone to shoot you tend to do it in safe environment where you are only looking at that specific skill in itself. You can spend hours working with someone looking specifically at one aspect of the jump shot. This could be something as simple as keeping the elbow below the ball, or flicking your wrist as you release the ball. As soon as you take this person out of the safe, controlled environment and put them into the fast paced, physical environment where the player now has to think about where he is on the floor, how he has been passed the ball, was it passed just right? Was it passed to high or low? Did the player have to stretch to control the pass? Was it passed to hard or soft? Where is the defender? Is the player in a position they are comfortable shooting from? Do the need to dribble? Is the person defending them smaller or taller than them? What is the score? How do their legs feel? Are they tired? This is an instantly more stressful environment. I have seen many players over the years work so hard to get their shots right, only to revert back to their former shooting technique once they get into a game. Time and again I have seen someone work hard to make inprovements to their jump shot technique, only to revert to their poor technique once in the heat of competition. So what is happening here? In this instance the athlete appears to have put in the hard work, and is still destined to fail. Does that not contradict the first point that hard work trumps talent? The problem here is not the effort that is being put forth, it is the environment in which the work is taking place. In order for someone’s jumpshot to improve you have to get the mechanics right, however, you need to put those mechanics under stress in the practice environment in order to prepare them properly for competition. Step one, get the mechanics right, step two test the mechanics under increasingly difficult situations, step three go into competition. When you think about preparing for exams in school, you learn the subject, you test your knowledge in class tests or mock exams, then you do the real exam. You learn the theory, you get to test your knowledge of the theory and continue to learn, then you test your knowledge properly in the exam. If you don’t put in the work you won’t get the results. In order to perform under stress you need to get used to stress. In this instance I am referring to stress as anything that will test your skill, knowledge or temperament. So go out there and challenge yourself, experiment and get outside your comfort zone. Get used to stress so that the hard work you do will work for you in the moments that it matters. Hard Work takes Hard Work Hard work can be infectious. However it takes time to cultivate and grow and can be snubbed out easily. To grow effort you need to be attentive and feed it with a vision, recognition of genuine effort and through careful handling of goal setting. When these are all taken care of and people feel valued, nurtured and needed they will be able to naturally grow their capacity for hard work. This is true in any walk of life. In work you will get much more from your team if everyone knows what they are working towards, if they get recognition for great work and are given autonomy to reach goals and targets set. In a relationship sharing aspirations and ambitions, appreciating what each other brings to the relationship and working together on shared goals are vitally important to continued growth and happiness. All too often I see couples who have not spent the time to align their priorities and understand the strengths that each other brings to the relationship. The typical result of this is a breakdown of the relationship, which is always sad to see. Also people do not understand that a relationship needs hard work. People change and evolve over time. I often think that my wife met me at just the right time. If we had met 5 years earlier she may not have hung around, as I was not yet mature enough to be with my wife. I did not understand the effort and work that is needed to keep a relationship fun, vibrant, growing and moving forward. When people feel valued and loved they will put in the effort and hard work to make it work. When they feel undervalued and unloved they will spend their energy tearing it all down. Work on the Small Details The foundation of any success is focusing on the details, learning how to do the fundamentals and putting them into practice. For example I could not go tomorrow and start working as an Architectural Engineer like my wife’s brother. If I could his five years at university would have been a waste of time, money and effort. Fraser (my wife’s brother) has gone to university and studied the details, he has worked on the fundamentals like maths, thermodynamics and tolerances of different substances. He has built up the applied knowledge to go and do that job. In the same instance I could not go tomorrow and become an Olympic Track Cyclist. I have not prepared my body to withstand the demands of that sport and I do not know the nuances needed to help me get a competitive edge when on the track. To be truly great at something you need to spend time learning the details. Andy Murray is now the world’s number one tennis player and people all over Great Britain are very proud of him for climbing to the top. However, very few people understand the hard work and effort that he has put into becoming the best in the world. It is fascinating to see the attention to detail that Andy has put in to give him the edge against anyone he is playing against. He has put a lot of work on his mindset, on his physical strength and his endurance. Through focusing on the small details he has built himself up to become the best tennis player in the world. He has looked at his weaknesses and turned them into strengths. As a younger player he would constantly psyche himself out of games, reverting to shouting at himself and melting down when the game was not going his way. Now he deals with adversity and works through it often turning the game back to his advantage through sheer perseverance. Facing off against Dockivic and Nadal (and others) the superior fitness of these athletes would allow them to outlast Andy over the course of a game. Not any more, Andy worked on the physical aspect of his game to make him strong and flexible, able to endure long rallies and hard fought five set matches. Through focusing on the details Andy has slowly, but surely, risen to the top. So moving forward please make sure that you understand that a fundamental instrument to carve out success is hard work. Understand that hard work, not talent, will allow you to be successful over the long haul. Seek out and look for ways to test your skills and knowledge to allow you to perform under stress. Be attentive to cultivating a culture of hard work. Finally pay attention to the details. Peace and Happiness. This past week I just listened to a two hour interview with John Wooden. As one of the most successful college basketball coaches of all time John is a legend within the game of basketball. However the impact of his legacy will be felt much wider than just the sport of basketball. John's pyramid of success is a brilliant testament to the man's intelligence, thoughtfullness and understanding of what it takes to be truly successful in any aspect of life. I have posted a picture of this below. After listening to this two interview I wanted to share his brilliance with more people. Below is a Ted talk that John delivered, which discusses the difference between winning and succeeding. Enjoy and be enlightened. Intro
The role of men and women in the home have changed. The past norms of men being the bread winner and women staying at home to look after the kids and keeping the man's castle clean and tidy are gone. Thrown out the window, probably and hopefully never to return. My wife and I seem to have a good understanding of each others roles, with regards to humdrum chores and looking after the children. Sometimes this understanding gets tested (as everything does with three children) however we adapt, communicate and get by whatever is causing us strife. However as the world has moved on, and the roles of mums and dads has become evermore blurred. I see a number of examples from friends, colleagues and on the school run, where the men simply are not stepping up to the mark. I see a lot of men who are holding on desperately to some bygone notion of what it is to be a father and a man. This blog post is to those men. I would love to see this group of change fearing, weak willed men come into the modern age in order to enjoy all the great things fatherhood has to offer, whilst taking the burden of supporting a family with massive pride and humility. This post will be a bit more focused on a singular topic than my normal posts, however you should still be able to take the points I am making regarding fatherhood and relate them to coaching, mentoring, leadership and management. At the end of the day the dad is still the man of the house, he is still the leader of the family. This has not changed. What has changed is the modern conception of good, wholesome, strong leadership. To be a leader is to serve those you lead, so therefore serve your family, serve your wife, serve your children......and reap the benefits. I am laying down three challenges to all fathers, so that we as a group can continue to grow and move towards a modern approach to leadership in the home. 1. Do the work This may seem like an easy one, however I see a lot of men out there not pulling their weight when it comes to parenting. Bringing up young children is not easy. It is physically, emotionally and mentally difficult. You have to be able to put up with tantrums over the most trivial of things, constant lifting, cleaning, tidying, washing, running, feeding and lots of other things ending with 'ing'!!!! There are days when I have literally curled up into a ball as I had reached my limit and just wanted to shield myself from the carnage created by my lovely little children. All to often I have seen and heard men use their job as an excuse to not pull their weight. I know couples where it is the norm for the wife to get as little as two hours sleep, whilst the husband gets his eight hours in, get his shower in the morning, goes to work and comes back just in time for the kids to go to bed. Not only is the wife not getting any sleep, she is also getting no rest during the day. I know of fathers who have refused to get up, point blank. In their head their job was more important than the overall health and well-being of his wife. I know I don't always do things the way my wife would want them done, but at least I try. I have put in my share of night feeds, putting the girls back to bed, making them feel safe when they have a nightmare and general running about at night. I do this as I believe that looking after kids is tough work and anything I can do to make my wife's day any better I will do it. Going to work and sitting in front of a computer for the day is much easier that caring for children......there, I said it. The same goes for making the dinner. I know men who either feel they can't make dinner, or they expect dinner on the table for them coming in from work. Come on guys, step up to the plate. Learn how to cook and take this burden off your wife. Dirty nappies is another pinch point for me. I know some dads who have not changed a dirty nappy. My point of view is that the dads were jointly responsible for the creation of this little being, therefore they should be jointly responsible for the things that little being creates!!!! Even dirty nappies!!! My main point here is very simple. Role up your sleeves and put in the work. Go the extra mile, go to work a little tired for a few months. Serve your family. Show your true leadership qualities by giving your wife the support she needs. You might not get instant gratification and reward for your efforts, but you will do long term. 2. Be Present This sounds really simple, but in the modern world of phones, tablets and 24 hours of sport on the TV it is actually quite a difficult thing to accomplish. Being present, for me, is being attentive to your children when you are with them. All your children want is your love, attention and care. If they don't get this they will tend to misbehave. However for me being present is much more that just making sure your kids behave in the short term, it is about building a solid and lasting relationship with your children. With every action you take you are sending out messages about who you are and your values. If you choose to bury your face into your phone checking facebook rather than listening and engaging with your kids you are sending them signals. If I am trying to speak to someone and get constantly ignored I stop trying. They have shown me that they do not value me enough to listen to what I have to say. I won't keep going back to get ignored again. Back to your children, by constantly ignoring them you are reinforcing this exact same reaction. My kids are always proudly showing me their latest drawing, lego construction or boogey they just pulled out of their nose. However the reaction on their face is priceless when I reciprocate their interaction with pride, positive reinforcement and high fives. By putting down the phone, or not watching the latest match and paying attention to my kids I myself feel better as I am choosing to engage with them rather than having my attention split between two things, which is ultimately frustrating. Take time to be present with your kids and learn to enjoy their company. It is very worthwhile and rewarding. 3. Get to know your children Once again this may seem like a very simple premise, however many people only get to know other people superficially. I can probably count the number of people who really know me on one hand. The modern world is a superficial one where people live their lives out online, only showing the happy pictures with sunshine in it. Because we live in this digitally crafted world more and more people are finding it difficult to relate to people in the real world. The biggest shock I got when we had our second child was that both children were very different, very individual. I thought that all my kids would be clones of each other, and I could not have been farther from the truth. All my kids are very different and the beautiful thing about that is that each has different likes and dislikes, different motivations and very different ways of making sense of the world. I have to spend time getting to know each of my kids individually. Spending time with them and learning about what makes them tick is amazing and is definitely time well spent. Also there is a difference between spending time with your children doing the activities you like versus spending time with them doing the things they like to do. Spending time with your kids in their comfort zone will help you bond with them and you never know, you might end up finding a new hobby you never knew you liked!!!! Peace and Happiness Folks. In all areas of life we are continuously met with loss. Losing a friend, a game of basketball or being unsuccessful in seeking a new job. Loss is a part of life and reframing loss into a positive learning experience is vital in order to thrive and grow day to day. In our modern pandered meander through life we have tried to eliminate loss as much as possible, to the point where we find it offensive and galling to have to put up with losing. We are taught in the modern world to be successful, be all that you can be, however rather than being taught that losing is a positive experience we are taught to win at all costs. We are taught to cheat. We are taught to avoid losing, rather than embrace it, learn from it and grow. Can you imagine if the first humans decided to sack it and go put their feet up when they failed to catch their prey, or when they failed for the one hundredth time to understand how to start a fire. They would have failed. Humanity would have failed. The modern world needs to learn to shrug off a win and continue to work hard and to learn to love losing. I worked out a long time ago that I hate losing more than I like winning. When I worked this out I was able to understand my motivations for competing and being competitive. However I would walk around with a dark cloud over my head for days after a loss. On the flip side the glow and sheen of winning would only last a short time, often leaving a void that I had to fill. It was not until I grew older (and started to meditate) that I began to fully understand the unique position losing can put you in, if approached with the right mindset. Losing is the springboard to success. Without loss, there is no way to appreciate winning. Losing can help you in any life situation you find yourself in, if approached the right way. Losing helps develop a winning culture (if approached correctly) As you all know I have been involved in basketball for a long time now. I have coached a number of teams and have seen success at the levels to which the teams were playing. With success comes the opportunity to step up to the next level. With very few exceptions stepping up to the next level in sport often means going from winning most of your games to losing most of your games. Unless managed right this can be a very difficult transition for teams and individuals. The same can be said from a job promotion. How many of you out there remember sitting there a couple of weeks into a new job thinking, 'How do I do this?', 'I am out of my depth!', or 'I don't know what I am doing!'. In this situation you are going from winning every day in your previous role to being challenged and often losing office battles regularly. In both instances it takes time to learn from your mistakes in order to develop a winning streak at your new level of play. Back to sports, I love stepping up to a higher level of competition. The games are tougher and more physical. The athletes are faster, stronger and more efficient. Moving up a level will lead a good coach to revisit their approach to the game they are coaching. It won't change their coaching ethos and their overarching beliefs of the sport, however it will challenge how they get their teams to prepare and train. The better players will also quickly learn that they need to change things up with regards to their preparation for competition. Extra training, more focused training, more concentration on core fundamental skills are all important in the step up. Decision making will need to be quicker and more concise, the ability to deal with different and new emotions and gaining a real appreciation of where you are in the new context of the league you have stepped into are all very important. In a family setting I have had many losses since becoming a father. I count every time I lose temper a loss, every time I raise my voice, or every time I am grumpy with my wife and kids. My first child has had to suffer the most of my parenting mistakes, however conversely she is also now hopefully reaping the benefits of my much improved fatherly skills now that I have three children. I have definitely grown and developed as a father, but I have made a ton of mistakes along the way. In this instance I have not stepped up to play in a higher league, I have stepped into a completely new sport!!!! However the same point stands, through failing and making mistakes I have learned to thrive. In every aspect of life framing losing as a way to learn, grow and develop will allow you to turn defeat into victory. Losing forces you to be reflective and evaluate How many times have you gone into a situation thinking, 'I am the best, today I will win, I am better than these other people', and the outcome of that situation is a negative one? It has happened to me a lot, especially in sport. You win a couple of games on the trot and the general feeling is, I am good, we are good, and we have no weaknesses. It has taken me a long time to change this kind of thinking in my own head and it is a challenge as a coach, a friend and a parent when I see others floating on the cloud of success and feeling invincible. Conversely how different is the conversation when we lose? It is a more focused, analytical conversation looking at the minutia. Winning allows you to think of things at a macro level, you don't bother with the small details. You can tend to brush over the mistakes and take them as they come because.....well.....you won!!! Losing however sets the mind into the micro level, you pour over the details, you get stuck on that one play, that one sentence spoke, that one answer in the test, and you go over and over and over it. So, why not use this focus in a positive way. Rather than being self-critical and damaging use the time after a loss to be reflective, pick up a number of key points to work on and then move on. Also focus on the things that you can influence. There is no point blaming the referees, or the other person in an argument. Look at the factors you can change and put a plan in place. Also it is important to seek feedback so that you are looking at issues from other perspectives, not only your own. If you don't get a job, ask for feedback as you will want to do better on the next recruitment process. If your partner is annoyed at you for doing something wrong make sure you understand what it is you did wrong so you can correct it. If your work project doesn't get the results you though you would make sure you understand why. Losing makes you focus, so use it to your advantage. Turn a negative experience into a positive one. Losing Challenges the ego Lastly, losing challenges the ego. It knocks you down a peg or two, it humbles you. I personally think that this is a very positive thing. For me losing has kept me balanced, it has stopped me getting big headed and it keeps me honest. I do not approach any situation expecting to be the winner. I know that in any situation I have to go and take the victory. This is done through being prepared, doing the work, going the extra mile and staying grounded and humble. Also if I approach every situation like this I am much more able to deal with the outcome in a positive manner. If I have prepared and tried my best and lost, then I have done my best. I can reconcile this with myself, think about what needs to change and then go work on it. For me the secret is not getting too high after a win and not getting too low after a defeat. Stay on the level, stay grounded and enjoy the experience. The outcome is the outcome and whether you win or lose, you have learned some valuable lessons and will be a better person for it. So, please go out there and lose...lose hard....enjoy it, reflect on it and move onwards and upwards. Peace and Happiness. |
AuthorMy name is Andy Smyth, I have spent the last decade working in the field of Sports Development, where I have had the pleasure of working to grow leaders within local community sports clubs in Scotland. Archives
August 2017
Categories
All
|