CLASS IS IN SESSION
It really is amazing – if you want to learn – how many people can teach you. Especially today, in this social media age with so much information available to us, opportunities to learn, grow, and improve are everywhere. I got an education this week from someone I’ve never even met - Texas Tech men's basketball coach Chris Beard. I’m hoping today that just as he did for me, he can teach you a thing or two as well.
At his press conference this week, a reporter asked Coach Beard about the adversity his young team was facing early this season. What was Beard’s plan, the reporter wondered, for helping his team deal with the struggle and find success? Coach’s response was so authentic and so insightful. I loved it and felt compelled to share it on social media, where it instantly resonated with others, too. In fact, it’s become my most popular liked and shared post ever. I captioned it simply, “Hello class, and welcome to Champions 101. I’m Professor Beard…”
Are you interested in uncovering what it really takes to be a champion? Good. Welcome. Watch the video. Class is now in session.
Here are a few of the most important takeaways from Professor Beard’s lesson…
1. Focus on the process. We all want winning results, but Coach Beard clarifies an important point for anyone pursuing success: a daily commitment to the process – to being your best right where your feet are today – is the most effective way to get the outcome you want when your big moment arrives.
2. Win the day. My book, Hidden Talent: Uncovering What Really Makes a Champion a Champion, explains: “Wherever you’re giving your time and attention today – in sports, at work, or at home – life is in many ways a game to be won or lost. Anywhere responsibility or opportunity exists, competition exists, too. It might involve the challenge of competing against someone or something else. More often and more importantly, it’s the challenge we you’re facing against yourself and your own potential. However it looks, champions recognize today the game that’s being played. They recognize how winning is really defined and what exactly it takes to win. And then they step in the arena and compete.” This is the process at work. Win this day, then do it again tomorrow.
3. Everything matters. To the champion, the old adage is true, “How you do anything is how you do everything.” For a big-time college basketball player, does sitting in the first couple rows of class really matter? Is taking your hat off and turning your cell phone off really that important? Does what they drink or how they eat really need to be a priority? Yes, yes, and yes. It all matters. As Hall of Fame football coach Vince Lombardi said, “Every job is a self-portrait of the person who did it. Autograph your work with excellence.”
4. Champions make winning choices. Another passage from Hidden Talent: “It’s cliché to say, but it’s true: you were not born a winner or a loser; you were born a chooser. In the same way, champions were not born champions. They were built and developed and refined, one winning choice at a time, and it works the same for you. Certainly there are some circumstances in life that have existed outside your control, and some of them may have powerfully impacted the story of your life. But champions recognize that who they are is not the sum total of their circumstances. Who they are is the sum total of their decisions.” There are so many choices for us to make each day, and every one of them either validates or discredits our identity as a champion.
5. Do the extra. Coach Beard lists just some of the many responsibilities every one of his players is charged with accepting each day, including embracing the opportunity to practice. Then what does he explain comes next, once practice is done? Come back in later to get extra work in on your own. Almost everyone will do what’s required, but it’s the extra that separates the very best from everyone else. While average or mediocre are busy justifying that they've done enough, the champion is hungry for more.
6. Stay the course. Becoming a champion isn’t supposed to be easy. If it was, everyone would do it. You might as well accept it – your journey to greatness will be filled with challenges and difficulties. You’ll get knocked down, beat up, and tossed around. It’s all a part of that becoming your best. Stay after it, Coach Beard implores. Keep fighting for what you want, and trust that what you get for your effort – and more importantly, who you become – will be worth the price you pay.