I reinvented my program from the inside out, starting with me, and the winning showed up.
Let’s do our best. Great advice and we should strive to perform at all times.
Big picture, however, I say let’s working on who we are, and how we impact others with the totality of who we are and how we impact them.
Step one is to gain awareness of who you are and what makes you tick. Your bottom line internal self is always there, work to know and understand it and then you can make improvements if you’d like, or simply accept and be great.
“Warts and all”, is a phrase we use to mean that we accept the failings and the shortcomings of those we love or appreciate, or, perhaps, need.
We don’t typically, however, use this phrase when we talk about ourselves. The “warts” that we know we have (how did warts get such a bad name anyway?) somehow don’t even make it to the front of the stage to get mention when we’re talking our us…or me, or myself.
It’s challenging to look for faults in ourselves. If we knew of them we would have fixed them! Or, would we? Maybe it’s acceptance that takes the place of introspection or deliberation of such faults.
Make time, front of your mind time, to examine the “warts” in your world, to look at the ways you fall short or are lacking.
As we look at our own pains or the holes in our game we may realize that they are either not so bad, or easier to fix than we thought. Either way, it’s liberating in a way to admit to these things, to say, “yes, I could/should/might be better in these ways.”
What if you did the work to know what was truly important to you?
What if you saw all of your actions thru a lens of the values you believe deeply in? What if you really knew what those were?
What if you worked hard to really value the impact of your actions based upon higher values that winning and losing? It might work.
Keep doing, and work harder on being.
it gets done
you won’t forget
or remember at an inappropriate time
you won’t have to ask others to do it
more gets done. you gain time.
sounds easy, right? future me so often gets in the way…wow, is she productive! so much, so that do-it-now me can easily step aside. but, the upside is a winner. keep fighting the fight and resisting the resistance.
Coaching is hard. Any program or team has a lot of moving pieces in play at any one time: players, parents, bosses, fans, vendors, strategy, maintenance, skill development, team culture all demand time and energy.
We work harder. And harder. Too often coaches hunker down and simply try harder rather than ask for help or look for a better way.
The culture of perfectionism that we talk about in our athletes exists for coaches, too.
Protecting “our stuff” is inherent to the coaching profession. We think that secrets might be stolen, ideas brought elsewhere only to beat us later…asking for help is a sign of weakness, right?
Why protect your stuff? First, you’ve likely not done anything totally new, and so much of coaching is in the talent, the team-building and the communication rather than the ideas or strategies themselves.
Make an effort to learn and share, bounce ideas off coaches of other sports, other age groups, other towns or schools. Find a way to make it less lonely and you might find yourself enjoying it more and getting better results.
That last conversation in your head? That idea that I thought might have merit but I’m not sure, yet? The article you read that feels like it’s on to something that would help you?
Sit with it, write on it, ask yourself what piece of you it touched.
Discovery is an action word. You have to work to discover meaning or impact, and work to make it apply to us, in specific, now.
And it’s likely that our discoveries will change just as they change us. “The thing” becomes something else and moves us in another direction.
Be on the lookout for discoveries.
We ask a lot of Time.
We beg for more of it, wish it would go faster, hope it might slow down, perhaps even if time would simply be a little kinder…time is a pretty important part of our lives.
Time takes blame for it’s shortcomings, “why don’t have I more time?” we ask, as if time cut a few corners last hour and shorted us. “Where did all the time go?” we demand when our days slip away, and somehow it’s Time’s fault for not being around when we need it.
Take a moment (if you can spare it) to think about Time and how we view it.
Should Time get the credit for being productive? Maybe you get the gold star for that one and you should use a small bit of time to plan the next chunk in which you can move forward with your tasks.
Time belongs to all of us, and it’s available to everyone but not used equally. We own our piece of time.
We don’t have that much time to spare and we can’t give it away to others, but we can choose to waste some, we can share it, and each of us gets to choose how much we how we use it. It’s up to you.
Tick tock.
Learning to embrace, or at least really feel it when you’re not feeling good about something is a true challenge. We’re wired to get away from pain or discomfort, physical or otherwise.
We avoid confrontation, hard situations and tough workouts because we don’t want to feel pain.
When we do fail, fall short or feel pain in a situation or relationship we typically try to cover it up, ignore or make excuses rather than actually feel how we feel.
Consider making an effort to combat these “feel good” attempts. It might be good for you.
Making it a habit to sit with that sinking or stinking feeling allows us to both recognize that it’s probably not that bad, and to help us to have perspective as we reflect on what got us to that point.
This takes practice. Go.
Working together is fun. Being on the same page with other people, finding a solution that requires others to add energy to the system, to match up the gears with colleagues, is a great way to move things forward.
That’s why so many of us love team sports, and why people pay to do the same workout with others that they could do for free by themselves.
Being around other people gives us energy. Working with others gets us to the intersection of enthusiasm and hard work. This is true on a team, within a coaching staff, position group, office pod or neighborhood.
Without a structured plan, however, working with a group can be annoying and unproductive. In team sports, this is where the “one chief” model becomes important. Someone needs to direct the work, start the music, evaluate the needs of the group.
How do you make working with others one way you get better as a coach?
In a world full of throwaway lines, one that gets me is, “don’t ever change!”.
Why would that be a thing you’d like to do? Why would person A not want person B to work to improve, to test new and better things, or at least to prove that the things they do currently really are the way to go?
We should always be growing, learning, indeed, changing. And, while we’re at it we should be mentoring, teaching and growing others.
Changing equals growing. So, “change!” need not mean to become something totally different or to get rid of the skills and habits that make you great, but to grow them and grow others along the way.
How could you grow yourself ?
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