BOUNCE BACK - TEAMWORK

“NO MAN IS AN ISLAND.”

This famous saying dates back to the seventeenth century, but the thought that it conveys is as relevant today as it was when it was first written. No person can achieve anything meaningful in life without the contributions of other people. To succeed at reaching your goals, therefore, you must learn to appreciate the people God has placed in your life.

In sports, the necessity of teamwork is obvious. In basketball, for instance, the player who takes frequent shots will be forced to depend on other players to grab the rebound when he misses one of his shots. And the tallest player on the team, who is excellent at scoring “in the paint,” will be forced to depend on the ball handlers to get the basketball to him. So while one player excels on offense, another player excels on defense. To win, therefore, all the players on a team will have to learn to make their strengths available to their teammates. To win, each player will have to learn to depend on his teammates to do what he cannot do.

And so it is in life. All of us must depend on others who contribute to us in areas where we are lacking. Likewise, we must contribute to others the skills that we have in hand. But we cannot depend on people when we don’t even recognize what they do for us or what they add to our lives.

How many people have played a supporting role in your life’s story? Where would you be today if it were not for your parents, your teachers, your coaches, and the mentors who helped mold you? Where would you be if not for the friends who helped you and the opponents who sharpened you along the way?
If you have taken a big shot at some point in your life and have missed that shot, be sure you understand what went wrong before you shoot again. Basketball players don’t quit and hang up their uniforms whenever they miss a shot in a big game, and you should not allow a missed shot to deter you from trying again. However, only a crazy man would keep doing something that isn’t working. So the best thing you can do when you have experienced a failure in your life is to understand what went wrong, learn from your mistakes, and try again with the newfound knowledge that you did not possess the first time around. And as you honestly evaluate your past misses, ask yourself what role teamwork may have played in your temporary failure.

Did you have the proper support system in place to help you in your efforts? Were you surrounded by the right mentors, workers, advisors, and partners? Were all the key personnel filling all the right positions in your venture, or were you flying by the seat of your pants, trying to do everything by yourself?
Even people who work alone find it necessary to depend on others for certain things they cannot do. Self-employed people, for instance, need bankers, accountants, doctors, and attorneys. And athletes who compete in individual sports need trainers, nutritionists, coaches, and agents. You, too, must surround yourself with the right people if you intend to do great things, and you must learn to draw from the strengths of others while contributing your own strengths to those who need your knowledge and experience.

Having the wrong people in your life or failing to work intelligently with the people who surround you is one of the leading causes of failure, because almost everything in life is a team effort. 
One element of teamwork is leadership. What is leadership? If you really think about it, leadership is simply the ability to convince others to follow you. Before people can follow you, you must be able to inspire them, because, while leadership necessitates a predefined destination, “follow-ship” necessitates the sacrifice of one’s own goals in favor of pursuing the leader’s vision.

Consequently, we all serve as leaders, but we all serve as followers, too. In some areas of your life, you will lead. You may be a Sunday school teacher at your church or a den leader for the Cub Scouts. But in other areas of your life, you will follow. The person who stacks boxes for you part-time at your company’s warehouse may very well be your golf instructor at the country club where you are a member.
It is necessary, therefore, to learn the value of teamwork and to learn the principles of teamwork as you grow older and pursue nobler ambitions, because virtually everything you attempt to do in life will be done in the context and with the assistance of other people. And while you will be forced in some situations to draw from the skills and knowledge of others, you will be the person that everybody looks to for leadership in other situations.

Learn to encourage the people around you. Learn to distinguish between those times when the group is more important and when the individuals who comprise the group are more important. Learn trust. Develop discernment. Learn to be supportive of those who join you in the “mission” that has united you, because, in the end, a team of people can do far more collectively than they could ever do individually, even if you were to combine the results of all their individual efforts.

I write frequently about the subject of work. Hard work is the bedrock of a fulfilling life, because hard work is a prerequisite for any meaningful achievement. Nobody gets from the bottom to the top and nobody recovers from a missed shot without making a heavy investment in hard work. Going to college, building a business, or laying the foundations of a thriving ministry require a lot more than a half-hearted contribution of 40 hours per week. The achievement of a meaningful dream requires the vast majority of one’s time and energy.

But work is more than just driving nails or sweeping floors. It is more than paying bills and ordering inventory. Part of the work of building any dream is to build a team of people around you who can help you reach your goals, and this part of your workweek must be just as important as the part that responds to clients’ needs.

One of the lesser-known “secrets” of success is that a successful person must be willing and able to network with others. He must be willing and able to surround himself with the kind of people who can encourage him when he feels overwhelmed, check him when he feels overly ambitious, point him toward the resources that he requires, and feed him the information about that particular segment of the world that is the focus of his pursuits.

Too many of us surround ourselves with people who make us feel comfortable. That is okay, as long as we also surround ourselves with people who can push us toward our potential. But all of us must be careful to avoid the tendency to settle only for those relationships that are familiar. We must work hard to create a circle of people in our lives who can make us better than we are.
Life is a team sport. Learn to appreciate the role that others play in your life, learn how to work with others, learn how to inspire, encourage and become a leader, and work at building your team, both inside and outside your venture.

BOUNCE BACK - POSITIONING

It’s amazing how many sports depend on positioning.

Basketball is an obvious example, because a player who gets loose for a shot beneath the basket is in a far better position than the player who is double-teamed at mid-court, and the player who is positioned for a rebound following a missed free throw is in a far better position than the player who is ten feet from the basket when the shot is missed.

But positioning plays an important role in other sports, too. In golf, the object of a 300-yard drive is not to hit the ball into the cup. Rather, the object of a 300-yard drive is to position yourself for the easiest possible approach to the green on your next shot. Likewise, the object of a good pool shot or the object of bowling is to position yourself for the next attempt.

This analogy applies to the rest of life as well. Most famous actors and actresses gained their stardom by positioning themselves early in life for starring roles later on. Most famous musicians became wealthy and prosperous because they positioned themselves to be discovered and to satisfy the musical appetites of an ever-changing culture. And the typical politician has risen through the ranks of our political system by positioning himself to become his party’s next superstar.

In life, positioning matters. What you do today will affect tomorrow, and what you decide today will shape tomorrow. If stock car drivers know the importance of positioning themselves to take the checkered flag, then you need to understand that the educational decisions, the financial decisions, and the career decisions you are making right now are destined to shape the way you finish your race. 

My advice to you, as a life coach, is to find out what you need to know to be well-positioned and then obtain that knowledge before you take another shot at your goals. 

Be teachable, not prideful, and you will succeed in all that you do. Every person should know that there is a real difference between the good kind of pride and the bad kind. Even the Bible teaches us that there is a distinction between these two attitudes, and the differences can yield diverse outcomes in a person’s life.

On the positive front, we should all be aware of the talents and skills that God gave to us when he made us. The apostle Paul encouraged the Galatians, for instance, to take pride in themselves (see Galatians 6:4). But he encouraged the Galatians to do so without comparing themselves to one another, because the tendency to compare is where the bad kind of pride comes into play.

The bad kind of pride is the kind that God hates (see Proverbs 6:16-17). God hates this kind of pride, because it “delights not” in the specific talents that he gave us. Rather, it delights in the fact that others do not have what we seem to have. Bad pride focuses on all of one’s good points to the neglect of one’s weaknesses and vulnerabilities, so it elevates its owner to the point that he can no longer see where he needs to grow.

All of us need to grow, and that is why bad pride is so reprehensible. All of us need to grow, and that is why bad pride can lead to failure and to a lot of self-inflicted pain. If you have failed in the past, there is a good chance that your failure was due to some knowledge that you lacked or some skills that you did not have at the time. 

A lot of factors contribute to success. While some of these factors are beyond our control, most of them are very much under our control. One of the essential elements of success is a work ethic that just won’t quit. Successful people position themselves for success by working hard.

Who are you? What is the most accurate way to describe you? What are the primary qualities and traits that comprise your life? What are your strengths, and what are your weaknesses?

If I were to ask you to write your answers to these questions, your responses would be quite different from the responses other people would give regarding your character and personality. And these discrepancies would not be surprising, because you see certain things about yourself that other people do not see, and vice versa. But the objective reality of who you are is shown in the things you do when nobody else is looking. The things you do behind closed doors are the things that truly define you.

Behind closed doors, are you honest or dishonest? Behind closed doors, are you confident or insecure? Behind closed doors, do you have a strong work ethic, or do you just talk a big game and blow a lot of hot air?

So behind closed doors, are you working toward your goals or just talking about them to people who seem impressed by your ideas? Behind closed doors, are you implementing a plan that can get you to the pinnacle of that mountain you want to climb, or do you tend to waste your time on unproductive activities that are designed to bring you temporary happiness?

The highway to greatness is paved with imagination and ingenuity. But the fuel that drives the engines that can carry you down that highway is hard work and sacrifice. Don’t be afraid to work for what you want.

If you had told me when I was in college that I would get married one day, I would have believed you. If you had told me that I would have a family, I would have believed you. But if you had told me when I was in college that I would see the legalization of same-sex marriage in my lifetime, I don’t think I would have believed you.

The lesson here is that the world is changing. For better or worse, the world is changing every day. The 7 billion people on this planet are pushing for change in every arena of life, so we are feeling the forward thrust of change the same way you can feel the forward thrust of an automobile when you press down on the accelerator.

Society is changing, technology is changing, and entertainment is changing. The role of government is changing, and even the food that we eat is changing. So you must be willing to change, too, if you intend to stay relevant and competitive. In fact, there is no faster way to get left in the dust than to dig in your heels and refuse to change, because your ability to change with the fluctuating needs of business and with the shifting priorities of society will define your ability to succeed.

That is why proper positioning for any pursuit requires a continual assessment of one’s relevance and continual movement away from outdated practices and toward new and better methods. You should never abandon your core values, but you should always be alert to what is happening in the world, and you must be willing to respond to current trends.

Are you willing to adapt? Are you willing to make the changes that are necessary to succeed? To be positioned for greatness, you must be willing to learn what you need to know, remain teachable and not prideful, work hard, and be willing and able to adjust to the changing circumstances around you.

PREPARATION

NOT LOOK BEFORE YOU LEAP, BUT

LEARN BEFORE YOU LEAP

If you were standing on a diving board, preparing to jump into the pool below, you would at least glance at the pool to make sure it was filled with water before making your dive. But it’s amazing how many people attempt great feats in life without investigating the risks and rewards associated with those ventures, and that is why so many people fail.

If you have failed, therefore, you know by now that it’s the hidden things that ruin great ambitions. It’s the unexpected, unplanned, and unanticipated things that cause us to fail and to give up on our dreams. So before you take another shot at the things that matter most to you in life, you need to learn what you don’t know before you attempt to do something you have never done before.

We understand that action is important. Nobody respects people who constantly talk about their dreams, yet do nothing to push their dreams forward. But thoughtless and impetuous action can often be worse than no action at all. If you want to move a mountain, you need to study the mountain first. And if you want to fly to the moon, you need to plot your course and fill your gas tank before you ignite your rocket.

Action is the vehicle that will carry us to our goals, but preparation is the discipline of learning to work the controls.

Have you ever seen those old images of coaches slumped in their chairs, watching movie reels of upcoming opponents? Have you ever seen photographs of coaches sketching X’s and O’s on the whiteboards in their locker rooms?

The fact is that few teams ever win a championship without great coaching, and great coaches give an inordinate amount of their time to preparation. During the off-season, they are preparing for the next season. Between games, they are preparing for the next game. And during timeouts and at halftime, they are preparing for the next phase of the game.

But great players prepare, too. Basketball players practice their shooting, they review their teams’ offense, and they work hard to condition their bodies. They even go so far as to study their opponents: what makes them successful, and what makes them vulnerable.

In high school, a good athlete can run on the field unprepared and still be competitive in the sport of his choice. In Little League, a team can skip practices and still compete for the championship. But in the big leagues, the tiniest thing can make all the difference in the hunt for a trophy, and preparation isn’t a tiny thing. It’s perhaps the biggest thing there is.

Nothing gives an athlete more confidence than going into a competitive environment with the feeling that he is prepared. Not only is he prepared physically; he is prepared mentally for the challenge that lies ahead. You, too, must be prepared if you intend to turn the ship of your life around. So learn what you need to learn and gather around you the people and the resources that you need to succeed before you take the next shot at your goals.

Not long ago, I was watching a golf tournament on television, and I noticed something I had never really noticed before. The leader of the tournament had just hit a beautiful, 330-yard drive down the middle of the fairway, and he was preparing to hit his “approach” shot to the green. As he stood there, discussing the shot with his caddy, both men pulled notepads out of their pockets and started comparing notes. Then they started pointing at various targets on the green and analyzing the treetops in order to discern the wind’s speed and direction.

It occurred to me that this player and his caddy must have spent an enormous amount of time studying that golf course before the start of the tournament. Apparently, they were aware of every little “rise” on the green. They were aware of the best landing spots for the ball, and they were aware of the unseen hazards that were awaiting a misplaced shot. So I realized that no professional golfer ever wins a major golf tournament without a vast amount of knowledge regarding the course he is playing.

This is the way it is in every competitive sport. This is the way it is in business, too, and in life. The people who achieve great things and who triumph over the forces that oppose them are the people who have prepared themselves by learning what they need to know. It’s what you know that gives you an edge in a competitive world.

Before we can succeed at anything, we must learn how to do it properly. And in the world of sports, we understand this principle. Sports teams have coaches, but individual performers have coaches, too, because they hire personal coaches to help them work on the weak areas of their game. So even the world’s greatest athletes are under the watchful eye and the knowledgeable guidance of coaches, and this is one of the reasons they win.

However, learning is only the first half of the equation for success; the other half of the equation is rehearsing. We can only learn new behaviors by practicing them. The proper way to grip a tennis racket is not the way that comes naturally to most people. In sports, if you want to be great, you have to resist the temptation to do what feels natural, and you have to learn to do things the right way. But the only way to learn how to do things right is by submitting to the tutelage of someone who knows what you don’t know. Once you have learned the proper form, you need to practice that newfound skill day after day after day until the skill becomes second nature and the execution of that skill becomes habitual. Success awaits those who learn and rehearse what they need to know.

If you have failed at something in the past, you have probably found yourself hesitant to try that same thing again.

But here’s the thing you need to know: success is achieved in small bites, not in one big gulp. And greatness is achieved incrementally, not all at once. No athlete’s career is made or destroyed on the basis of one shot. No matter how important the shot may be, no player’s career becomes worthy of the Hall of Fame based on one shot. And no player’s career is ended based on one miss.

Success is a cumulative process. In other words, you have to start today and do a lot of little things right, every single day, before you can finally create a track record of achievement that will cause people to see you as successful. Failure is the same way. Some failures can be catastrophic, for sure. But no failure is fatal until that failure becomes one in a series of failures that define your daily lifestyle and your character.

So regardless of what your past history may be, you can start writing a new “history” for your life today. Obviously, it may take you some time to write that new history for your life, because it took you some time to write your old one. But eventually, the version of your life that you start writing today will be the version that people remember.

So prepare to do all the little things right—today, tomorrow, and every day—and prepare to start making the right kinds of decisions until you finally create a new storyline and a new track record for your life that results in a positive reputation for achievement.

POUNDING THE BOARDS

No one plays this game or any game perfectly. It’s the guy who recovers from his mistakes who wins.

—Phil Jackson

All my life, I have been struck by the countless similarities between sports and life. Both sports and life require know-how, both demand talent and skill, and both can lead to glorious and fulfilling victories. However, sports and life are marked with obstacles and setbacks too, with mistakes and with crushing defeats. They are each marked with opposition, competition, and failure. And they offer us challenges, as well as opportunities to correct our mistakes and to rise above our failures. In athletic competition, there is always the next game or the next season. In a basketball game, there is always the chance to rebound a missed shot. And in life, we must create the same opportunities to turn failures into successes. We must keep “pounding the boards.” 

I believe that Americans are enthralled with sports because sports contain all the core elements of life. Sports involve conflict, they involve hard work, and they involve reward for a job well done. Sports involve the highest standards of self-discipline and personal responsibility. They involve teamwork, talent, skill, and tremendous focus. But perhaps most importantly, sports involve the opportunity to achieve the greatest imaginable goals at the risk of the worst imaginable defeats in full view of other people.

Sports offer players challenges, as well as opportunities. But sports also offer chances for players to correct mistakes and to rise above past failures, because, in sports there is always the next game and the next season, and in sports there will always be an opportunity to rebound a missed shot, to recover a fumble, or to sink a long putt to save par. So these opportunities, along with the ensuing risks, are what make athletic competition so appealing to the masses. Sports are a perfect analogy for life itself.

This is why we should learn something from America’s favorite obsession. We should learn that life is tough, yet well worth the effort. We should learn that life is risky, yet always salvageable. And we should learn that a person’s full potential can only be realized in the face of great opposition and a multitude of failed attempts.

Have you ever taken a shot at one of your goals only to miss the mark? At one time or another, all of us have fallen short when it comes to the goals we have established for ourselves. But success in the game of life is achieved not in the way we deal with all the triumphs we enjoy along the way; ultimate success is found in the way we deal with the missed shots that can easily destroy us if we don’t learn how to handle them.

I am not exaggerating when I say that I could literally fill the Manhattan telephone directory with the names of people who have achieved great things by overcoming their failures. In fact, most successful people have a track record of failure somewhere in their lives. Henry Ford, H.J. Heinz, and P.T. Barnum all filed for bankruptcy when they were young men. Winston Churchill and Abraham Lincoln suffered numerous political defeats before they were finally elected to office. Thomas Edison was fired twice, and Albert Einstein was expelled from school. And while most successful businesspeople have failed at some point in their careers, most creative geniuses have suffered rejection before they were finally embraced. Just ask Walt Disney or the Beatles.

Greatness, therefore, is not defined by one’s talents as much as one’s tenacity. All of us have talents that provide us with the means for success, but few of us have the ability to bounce back from disappointment and to keep shooting at the goal until we achieve success. It is the ability to rebound your missed shots that will eventually catapult you to greatness, not your ability to score every time you touch the ball.

To my point, a professional basketball team will sign a multi-million-dollar contract to acquire the services of a great rebounder. Rebounders aren’t usually the best ball handlers in the game. In fact, they are so tall and lanky, they typically lack the coordination needed to dribble and pass the ball with confidence. Rebounders aren’t usually the best scorers on the court either. Rarely will you find a “big man” who can shoot a basketball with precision. But rebounders do one thing that is vital to the success of their teams: A rebounders grabs the ball after a missed shot, giving his team a second chance to score. 

It may not seem like it when you watch the highlight reels every night on television, but the world’s greatest basketball players actually miss more shots than they make. Victory, therefore, is dependent on taking possession of those loose balls so the team can have multiple shots at the goal. More often than not, the team that prevails on the backboards is the team that wins the game, and the team that wins the most games is the team that claims the championship at the end of the season.

Just as basketball is not a game of perfection but a game of second chances, life is about second chances too. Victory in life is not reserved for those with perfect shooting records. Rather, victory in life is reserved for those with the ability to rebound from their past mistakes and to try over and over again until they finally achieve success.

What does it take to be a good rebounder? Obviously, for basketball, if you wanted to lead the league in rebounding, you would need certain physical traits. A short player can certainly excel in the game of basketball, but he would never excel “in the paint.” He’s just too short. He doesn’t have the natural qualities that a person needs in order to compete with seven-footers directly beneath the basket. So the first question a person should ask himself before he attempts any lofty goal is whether he has the natural qualities that are necessary for success in that field. Therapists need to have patience, for instance, and morticians need to be able to deal with death.

But the gulf that exists between success and failure is not a gulf that is bridged by natural qualities alone. Most of the people who fail in a pursuit are people who had the natural traits they needed to succeed. But the successful people in any field of endeavor are those who have developed the acquired traits that are necessary to achieve the goals they have established. They have developed the habit of hard work. They have grown in their understanding of their craft. They have learned from their past experiences, especially their failures, and they are applying the wisdom they have gained. They have nurtured relationships that are helpful to the goals they have set for themselves. 

Great rebounders are simply tenacious, and the only thing that matters in the face of a temporary setback is regaining control of the ball and taking another shot at the goal, because success is determined by scoring, not by the number of shots it takes to get there. So keep trying, and never give up. Your past has no effect on your future except to serve as a source of wisdom and motivation.