Believe – We Can Be So Much More Than What We Are

It was a great weekend for football. My USC Trojans prevailed once again and all the coach of Notre Dame could say was, “we fought hard.” The thing about performance is that the description of effort as an excuse of failure is simply a story we tell ourselves. Great teams find ways to win, even when they don’t deserve to win. Notre Dame had so many extra chances and they were unable to win. Some of that is just karma. The continuous success of a football team is primarily due to its coach. A coach is nothing more than the organizational leader. The coach sets the tone, creates the culture, and they either create a culture of winning without excuse or simply trying hard. It is much more fun to win! I have been on both kinds of teams, and trying hard is not enough. I’m not talking here about winning at any cost. I’m just saying people that do what it takes to prepare well, to make sure that mistakes aren’t made, and to make sure that strengths are magnified consistently win. That is fun!

We should teach our children what it takes to win. Participation is simply not enough. People have no idea how great they can become. Recent research shows that most people plateau after 50 attempts of doing anything: 50 attempts at learning a dance, 50 attempts at painting a picture, or 50 attempts at trying to serve a volleyball. At 50 there is some mental trigger where most of us think, “well that’s about as good as we’re ever going to get.” But, great people continue to learn, to get feedback, and to diligently practice after the 50 times plateau. How good can we be? We have no idea, but we have to come at life with the idea that we’re good enough to be extraordinary at what we are passionate about, because WE ARE!