Smart people fail. Good people fail. Ishtar. The Titanic. The XFL.
Failure traverses myth and legend. Achilles has his heel, Superman Kryptonite, and Icarus lacked discipline.
John Maxwell's Failing Forward recommends avoiding the top ten reasons people fail. Use German mathematician Carl Jacobi's principle: "Invert, always, invert."
Poor People Skills.
Connect. People value honesty, respect, appreciation. Steve Kerr and Gregg Popovich read to study the world and engage players in social issues important to their players... like Eddie Mabo Day, celebrating land rights of indigenous Australians.
Be the coach players run through walls for.
A Negative Attitude.
Choice powers our decisions, effort, and attitude. Choose to bring energy and energize.
Positivity inspires creative freedom. It permits players to leave their comfort zone and overcome fear. Surround yourself with positive people but not yes men.
A Bad Fit.
Help players find situations that work academically, athletically, and socially. We all know players who chose a school for sports and struggled with minutes, relationships, or injury. Like the school's "big picture."
"Fight for your culture every day."
Lack of Focus.
Coach Bob Knight speaks about the sequence of concentration, anticipation, reaction, and execution. Be here now, in the moment. Win this possession. Increase your focus with mindfulness training.
Take a breath and reset.
A Weak Commitment.
Coach John Wooden never got the expected call from Minnesota and committed to UCLA before the Gophers offered him their job. Wooden's system took sixteen years to come to championship fruition in Westwood. "Make every day your masterpiece" commits to daily improvement.
Steph Curry knew his middle school shot wouldn't play. As a young player, he rebuilt his shot (in high school) to get shots off.
A Short-Cut Mindset.
After stretching, the UCONN women take two laps around the court before practice. Nobody cut corners.
A novel may take years to write, but carving out protected location and distraction-free time helps authors like Dan Brown succeed. Brown took 150 pages of a manuscript to the beach to review and realized it didn't achieve his intent...he started over.
Brown says the "difference between bad writers and good writers is that good writers know when they're bad."
Relying on Talent.
Kobe Bryant, Larry Bird, and Bill Bradley carved legends into the hardwood, the hard way. Bryant took 1,000 shots a day for a hundred days each summer. As a high schooler, Bird shot 500 free throws each day before school. Bradley practiced three hours a day and all day on Saturday to overcome athletic limitations.
Wasted talent litters basketball courts everywhere.
A Response to Poor Information.
We're wired to accept what we hear as good information. That's the power of 'fake news,' leveraging intellectual laziness. Do the work to truthseek.
"Luck is the residue of design." - John Milton
No Goals.
Dream big. Work bigger.
New coach Sonny Lane had a clear pathway in mind. "In the summer before his first season (1970-71), Lane had gathered the players on the playground behind the Woodville School for an initial meeting. His first high school team went 3-17.
There he pulled paint cans and brushes from his car and instructed the team to get to work sprucing up the playground court and painting the wooden backboards that were nailed to telephone polls. On one of those polls Lane painted in red, “Tech Tourney ‘73” which is what the state high school basketball tournament was called in 1970."
Coach Sonny Lane had the Pyramid of Success in the locker room in the early 1970s. That helped create a New England Basketball Hall of Fame career.
A dream is only as good as the work behind it.
Lagniappe: "Basketball is a game of creating and preventing separation." Combine hesitation and crossover moves.