Winning in sports or in any competition has been touted as the goal for all of us. Now the question is how do we win while everyone else wins as well? The truth is that we cannot all win every competition we participate in but we can do our best. When we give something our best effort and don’t hold anything back, we win. I learned this lesson from John Wooden in his book, Wooden on Leadership.
Coach Wooden talks about if we show up every day and give our best effort, we are winners. Coach Wooden himself did not win a championship at any level until his 29th year of coaching. He kept at it every day for almost three decades before he finally won one. After he won his first NCAA championship he won 9 more in the course of 11 years. I am reminded of others that took a while to make their ideas come to fruition; Colonel Sanders, Walt Disney, Thomas Edison and Pete Carrol to name a few. These guys all experienced a lot of failure early in their careers but they kept at it and eventually were able to experience success.
It is difficult to go through some obstacles, especially early in your career and learn from it. You should take comfort in knowing that most great achievers have gone through difficult times and kept at it until they made it to the other side. In order to have the same results you need to make sure you love what you do, bring energy and enthusiasm to your work every day, learn from your mistakes, stay laser focused and never give up. I recommend reading Coach Wooden’s book so you can find out the principles he implemented that was the cause of the success he eventually experienced as a coach so that you can apply it to achieving your goals.
Sincerely,
Donny Mateaki
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