TEAMWORK
“The most DIFFICULT thing for individuals to
do when they become part of a team is to sacrifice,
it is much EASIER to be selfish”
--Coach Pat Riley
Sunday, January 27, 2013
WHAT SETS DISCIPLINED
PEOPLE APART?
1) The capacity to get past distractions.
There are players who get thrown by less than optimal conditions;
they need perfect weather, a perfect playing surface, perfect health.
There are other players who can’t be distracted. They can play on grass, turf,
or the parking-lot blacktop —the only thing they focus on is the competition.
2) The willingness to condition the mind and body for the task at hand.
After a leader supplies the needed direction and knowledge base,
it comes down to that old cliché:
- Who wants it more?
- Which side is prepared to push itself forward and seize the day?
3) The ability to keep your poise when those around you are losing theirs.
Mature players will absorb these excesses in stride, even when
After a leader supplies the needed direction and knowledge base,
it comes down to that old cliché:
- Who wants it more?
- Which side is prepared to push itself forward and seize the day?
3) The ability to keep your poise when those around you are losing theirs.
Mature players will absorb these excesses in stride, even when
they’re out-and-out flagrant. I tell my players to put their emotions on hold,
to stone-face their opponents. Once the opposition knows what you’re
to stone-face their opponents. Once the opposition knows what you’re
Thursday, January 24, 2013
HOW TO PROFIT FROM FAILURE
1. Change Your Attitude
Business staffing pioneer Robert Half observed, “Laziness is a
secret ingredient that goes into failure. But it’s only kept a secret
from the person who fails.” People who success develop an attitude
of tenacity. They refuse to quit, and they are determined not to let
failure defeat them. If you desire to fulfill your dreams, achieve your
goals, and live life to the fullest, that’s the kind of attitude you need
to cultivate.
2. Change Your Vocabulary
A noted psychiatrist once remarked that the two saddest words in
the human vocabulary are “if only.”
Failure isn’t failure if you do better the next time. In Leaders on
Leadership, Warren Bennis interviewed seventy of the nation’s
top performers in numerous fields. None of them used the word
failure to describe their mistakes. Instead they referred to learning
experiences, tuition paid, detours, or opportunities for growth. You
may think that’s a small difference, but that small difference can
make a big difference. The way you think determines how you act.
3. Pay Little Attention to the Odds
Every person who has ever achieved something significant had
to overcome the odds. The problem for most people isn’t the odds.
It’s that they sell themselves too short. R. H. Headlee
observed, “Most people think too small, aim too low, and quit
too soon.”
When it comes to the thing you love to do, the things you were
made to do, aim high. The odds matter little. Whether you fall
down along the way matters little. You fell when learning to
walk, didn’t you? Maxwell Maltz, developer of psycho-cybernetics,
says, “You are champion in the art of living if you reach only
65 percent of your goals.” Remember, if at first you don’t
succeed, then know that you’re running about average.
4. Let Failure Point You to Success
5. Hold on to Your Sense of Humor
One of the best things you can do for yourself when you fail is to
learn to laugh.
6. Learn from Your Mistakes
Successful restauranteur and celebrity chef Wolfgang Puck
said, “I learned more from the one restaurant that didn’t work
than from all the ones that were successes.”
“Sometimes you win and sometimes you learn.” (Robert Kiyosaki,
Rich Dad, Poor Dad) That’s the mark of a great attitude! You don’t
lose—you learn.
7. Don’t Lose Your Perspective
Failure is just like success—it’s a day-to-day proves, not some-
place you arrive one day. Failure is not a one-time event. It’s how
you deal with life along the way.
8. Don’t Become too Familiar with Failure
9. Make Failure a Gauge for Growth
Successful people understand the role failure plays in achievement.
That’s true in any life endeavor. Inventor Thomas Edison said, “I’m
not discouraged because every wrong attempt discarded is another
step forward.” And gold-medal-winning gymnast Mary Lou Retton
asserted, “Achieving that goal is a good feeling, but to get there you
have to also get through the failures. You’ve got to be able to pick
yourself up and continue.” The farther you go, the more failures
you experience.
Psychologist Joyce Brothers observed, “The person interested in
success has to learn to view failure as a healthy, inevitable part
of the process of getting to the top.” As actor Mickey Rooney said,
“You always pass failure on the way to success.”
10. Never Give Up
Author, lawyer, economist, and actor Ben Stein says, “The human
spirit is never finished when it is defeated. It is finished when it
surrenders.”
From "The Difference Maker" by John Maxwell
YOUR THOUGHTS
-Robin Roberts
Monday, January 21, 2013
TRUST YOUR SUBORDINATES
Leadership
Leadership has been called "The ability to get followers." One of the deepest cravings of human nature is the need to feel important, to have a sense of meaning and purpose in life and work. Leaders are invariably those who can tap into the deeper emotions of others and get them to rise above and beyond anything they may have accomplished in the past.
Inspiring Words Lead to Victory
Winston Churchill was able to arouse and inspire an entire nation with words like these: "Let us so carry ourselves that if the British Empire should endure a thousand years, men will still say, this was their finest hour."
Spearhead A Turnaround
Lee Iacocca stepped into Chrysler Corporation when the company was almost bankrupt. Through the sheer force of his personality, his unshakable determination, his appeals to Congress, to Chrysler workers and to Chrysler customers on television, he spearheaded a turn-around that will go down in the history books as one of the greatest achievements in American business.
Trust Others
The key to getting followers in every case is to "trust your subordinates." Many studies have concluded that it is the mutual bond of trust and respect that acts as the catalyst that creates high performance. Not only must you trust your subordinates, but even more important, they must trust you.
Act With Integrity
In order to "get followers," your subordinates must have an absolute belief in your integrity. They must believe that you will abide by the highest ethical standards of fairness and justice. Integrity appears over and over as the most important leadership quality. People can only put their whole hearts into their work when they feel secure and they can only feel secure when they can relax and trust you completely.
In order to "get followers," your subordinates must have an absolute belief in your integrity. They must believe that you will abide by the highest ethical standards of fairness and justice. Integrity appears over and over as the most important leadership quality. People can only put their whole hearts into their work when they feel secure and they can only feel secure when they can relax and trust you completely.
ANYTHING IS POSSIBLE
The powerful experience of inspiration that many of us feel at
the beginning of a new year is the recognition that we really can
do something that we hadn't believed possible before—that we are
capable of breaking through to higher ground and reaching previously
unimaginable levels of our own potential. Indeed, the uplifting
experience of inspiration that we feel in those moments is the
thrilling sense that anything is possible. That feeling of inspiration is
a taste of spiritual freedom, because within it we experience liberation
from any habitual sense of limitation
"If you can dream it, then you can achieve it."
-- Zig Ziglar
Sunday, January 20, 2013
BECOMING A BETTER THINKER
1. Expose yourself to good input: Good thinkers always prime
the pump of ideas. They always look for things to get the thinking
process started, because what you put in always impacts what comes
out. Read books, review trade magazines, listen to tapes, and spend
time with good thinkers.
2. Expose yourself to good thinkers: Spend time with the right
people. As I worked on this section and bounced my ideas off of
some key people (so that my thoughts would be stretched), I realized
something about myself. All of the people in my life whom I consider
to be close friends or colleagues are thinkers. The writer of Proverbs
observed that sharp people sharpen one another, just as iron sharpens
iron. If you want to be a sharp thinker, be around sharp people.
3. Choose to think good thoughts: To become a good thinker, you
must become intentional about the thinking process. Regularly put
yourself in the right place to think, shape, stretch, and land your
thoughts. Make it a priority. Remember, thinking is a discipline.
4. Act on your good thoughts: World War I flying ace Eddie Rickenbacker
said it all when he remarked, “I can give you a six-word formula for success:
Think things through—then follow through.”
5. Allow your emotions to create another good thought: To start the
thinking process, you cannot rely on your feelings. If you wait until you
feel like doing something, you will likely never accomplish it. The same
is true for thinking. You cannot wait until you feel like thinking to do it.
6. Repeat the process: One good thought does not make a good life.
The people who have one good thought and try to ride it for an entire
career often end up unhappy or destitute. They are the one-hit wonders,
the one-book authors, the one-message speakers, the one-time inventors,
who spend their life struggling to protect or promote their single idea. Success
comes to those who have an entire mountain of golf that they continually mine,
not those who find one nugget and try to live on it for fifty years.
From John Maxwell's "How Successful People Think"
Sunday, January 13, 2013
FAILURE LEADS TO
GROWTH & SUCCESS
GROWTH & SUCCESS
From the book, "The 15 Invaluable Laws of Growth," John Maxwell talks
about failing how it is important to the process of success.
After all, there needs to be mistakes along the way in order for us to discover
what we need to do and become to be successful.
As Maxwell states, "Everything looks like a failure in the middle."
To prove his point, he quotes a passage by Price Pritchett:
"You can't bake a cake without getting the kitchen messy. Halfway through surgery
it looks like there's been a murder in the operating room. If you send a rocket to
the moon, about ninety percent of the time it's off course -- it 'fails' its way to the
moon by continually making mistakes and correcting them."
A basketball season is much the same way. For teams that struggle early but
find their way to the NCAA tournament or win their conference tournament --
there's a reason. The high school team that is .500 much of the year only to go
on a long run and advance deep into their state tournament -- there's a story.
Those our teams who didn't let failure and losses be failure and losses.
They utilized them to learn more about themselves and what they needed
to do to improve.
If you are coaching or playing on a team that is not playing to their
potential, it is not time to pout or complain or make excuses.
It's time to take a look at how to improve and advance.
Saturday, January 12, 2013
ADVERSITY COMES TO US ALL
Adversity comes to us all—it’s only a matter of when.
The real question is not whether we’ll face adversity but how we will respond to it when it comes.
If our attitude is one that embraces learning and growing, we’ll treat adversity as a stepping-stone to the success we desire, rather then see it as an insurmountable obstacle.
But if we have a negative attitude and become defensive at the first hint of criticism or begin to blame others for our mistakes, we’ll miss the opportunity to develop into the types of people we want to be.
THE PURSUIT OF HAPPINESS
Pursuing happiness is like chasing a rainbow. The faster we go, the harder we try, the farther the office becomes. I have learned that happiness is not a pursuit -- it's a choice. Happiness is a state of mind, obtainable at any time, in any moment of your choosing.
It's not the pursuit of happiness we should concern ourselves with, but rather the pursuit of fulfillment, purpose and significance. If I have created a life of meaning in which I have a deep sense of purpose and value, that won't change because someone knocks my ice cream over. Fulfillment is a state of existence, not a fleeting emotion.
So what about being happy? There are two ways you can choose to be happy at any moment. One: Think about all you have to be grateful for. Some of the happiest people I have ever met are those who have comparatively few accouterments to be happy about. When you feel gratitude, you cannot feel fear or worry at the same time. Gratitude washes it all away. If you are reading this, you're breathing and above ground, so you have many blessings to be grateful for -- just remind yourself at any moment you want to feel happy. The second way to choose happiness -- the best way, in my opinion -- is to do something to make someone else happy. The person who bestows happiness always gets much more of it return.
I AM UNSTOPPABLE
A sold-out crowd of more than 17,000 watched from the risers of the Wells Fargo Center in Philadelphia on March 19, 2011 at Arizona State University senior Anthony Robles emerged from the locker room on crutches. After handing them to ASU assistant coach Brian Stith, he hopped to the corner of the mat, crouched down on one knee, and waited for the whistle that would signal the start of his final wrestling match.
"I told myself I was unstoppable," says Robles of that moment. "I had put way too much into it to go in there and not come out with a national title."
That day, Robles, who was born without a right leg and permanently traded in a prosthetic one for crutches at the age of 3, defeated defending national champ Matt McConough 7-1 to become the first disabled wrestler in history to win a national college title.
By Alison Miller of Spirit Magazine
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