Amazing Lessons – Sport

Starting as a kid and continuing right up to the present day, Sport and Music (capitalized on purpose!) have both meant a heck of a lot to me and added so much to my life in a whole host of ways.

I started to write the next line right here summing up what both deliver for me today….but I had to stop because the line just got too long!  Upon reflection, this string of words truly demanded a section of it’s own, such is it’s weight and importance. So here we go:

Excitement, anticipation, wonder, amazement, relaxation, thrill, shock (in a “holy crap!!” kind of way), disbelief, relief, astonishment, sadness, joy, fun, frustration, energizing….seriously, the list goes on and on.

One of my Dad’s favorite lines was “Life is made of memories, use your money to help make ‘em”.  Well, mission accomplished, Dad…..I’ve made a ton of memories out of Sport and Music and I’ve certainly disposed of a fair amount of income in so doing!   Good thing is, it’s the memories that last, not what you spent on them.

Though both feel like they’re actually a part of my being at this point, I’m going to focus on Sport for the purposes of this essay, and will come back to Music in a future piece.

From a young age, in addition to the range of feelings and emotions above, Sport has taught me so many valuable lessons – some overtly and directly, some a little more subtly and indirectly.  Life lessons that have stuck with me, and served me well, throughout the years.

 

Learning From Mistakes

I started playing football (soccer) competitively when I was maybe 8 or 9 at Junior School in the North of England.  The first coach we had was a person who, outside of family, became one of the first people I looked up to and took (sport) lessons from.  Mr. Harrison was a lovely man - patient, kind, a good listener, great teacher and someone it was easy to listen to.  I can remember clearly, to this day, “Mr.H” as we came to know him in later years, teaching us 9-year old’s how to trap a ball that’d been passed to us. Cushion it gently, move your foot back as the ball arrives, almost “catch” it with your foot.  In my mind’s eye I can see us kids lined up across from each other, passing a ball back and forth, practicing and learning. Importantly, when the ball invariably bounced too far off someone’s foot, Mr.H would just encourage us to do it again, pointing out how to do it better next time, delivering the lesson. Over and over and over……

This made me think of the famous Michael Jordan quote, when he was asked about learning and failure:

“I’ve missed more than 9,000 shots in my career. I’ve lost almost 300 games. 26 times, I’ve been trusted to take the game-winning shot and missed. I’ve failed over and over and over again in my life. And that is why I succeed.”

I’m a huge proponent, and believer, of the fact that one of the true lessons in life is that life truly is a series of lessons. Learning often involves struggle, and invariably a degree of failure.  There’s not one of us who as a baby arose from the floor, instantly started walking and thought “ya know what??...I might as well just start jogging” and ran off into the distance. Nope, we clambered up, fell down and hit repeat on that process countless times until eventually making it a few wobbly steps into the waiting arms of a gleeful family member!

I recently heard an interview with one of Wales and Great Britain’s greatest rugby players of the modern era, Jonathan Davies. The interviewer asked, “When did you know you were a winner?” Almost immediately, Jonathan answered, “I don’t know actually….. all I seemed to do was fail”

In a commencement speech he gave this year at Dartmouth College in New Hampshire, the great tennis-player, Roger Federer, spoke at length about failure.  Federer won 1,251 career matches, resulting in 103 career titles, 20 of which were Grand Slam single finals. He won Wimbledon a staggering 8 times.

He said: “….even top ranked tennis players barely win more than 50% of the points they play…. the best in the world aren’t the best because they win every point, its because they know they’ll lose again and again and know how to deal with it….they learn from it”

 

Self-discipline & Grit

“Mr. H” coached my friends and I in football and cricket, all in the same village for many years. In reality, for the better part of 10 amazing, memorable years.  The lessons he delivered were often things we would practice at home, or while playing together in a park or on a playground.  I like to think we all had a little talent to begin with, but it was the lessons he delivered and then the discipline to practice, over and over, again and again, that honed that talent.  As a kid, that involves a lot of play, but as we grow that practice becomes less playful and involves more effort and determination.   It requires more self-discipline…doing the things we know we need to do, when we could find a million, apparently compelling, reasons not to.

At the very highest levels of Sport, with amazing competitors constantly snapping at their heels, what does that look like?

Roger Federer again:

“Effortless is a myth.  I didn’t achieve what I did by talent alone…..yes, talent matters, but it’s not about having a gift, it’s about having grit and discipline…”

I love the concept of Grit, and particularly as it pertains to professional athletes. Though we all see the apparent “effortless” performance and achievement that Federer spoke of, none of them achieve it without an element of Grit.

Author, Angela Duckworth defines Grit as “the combination of perseverance and passion for a very long term, meaningful goal”

Federer took many, many years and countless hours in the gym and on practice courts to reach his glorious best. We all saw the result, but he worked the process, with incredible self-discipline and grit that we simply didn’t see.

The great American athlete, Jesse Owens, had a life full of struggle, from ill-health as a child through widespread discrimination as an adult. He is regarded as one of the greatest athletes of all-time, most famously as the winner of four gold medals and setting world records at the 1936 Berlin Olympics, in Hitler’s Germany. Owens would later say “in order to make dreams come into reality it takes an awful lot of determination, dedication, self-discipline and effort”.

Jesse’s life clearly required those things, including copious amounts of grit, all at a level few of us could even come close to imagining today.  Greatness indeed.

 

Courage and Risk Taking

Grit, self-discipline and the willingness to learn from mistakes are all amazing traits. However, to reap the rewards they help provide it often takes courage to act.  To do what you’ve never done before, to perform at a level not seen before, to try and try again after failures…it’s not easy.

Bob Bowman, who helped coach Michael Phelps to an incredible 23 Olympic swimming gold medals once said - “Sometimes the security of our lives keeps us from living life. But if you want to take that ‘next step’ toward the dream you’re after you’ll need to become a bit riskier.”

I often use the line “get comfortable feeling uncomfortable” to help explain and coach activities that will lead to growth.  For growth happens when we transition from doing something we know inside-out, upside-down and we’re totally comfortable with, to something we absolutely are not.  And that takes courage….doing something you’ve never done before isn’t easy, but being willing to lean into that uncomfortable feeling, being prepared to take that mental risk….that’s where growth happens.

Dick Fosbury was an Olympic High-Jump Gold Medalist and, famously, inventor of the “Fosbury Flop” – the current back-to-the-bar high jump technique named after him. Fosbury started developing the technique in 1963 and unveiled it to the world at the 1968 Olympics in Mexico City, winning Gold and equaling the Olympic record. Fosbury said "I was told over and over again that I would never be successful, that I was not going to be competitive and the technique was simply not going to work. All I could do was shrug and say "We'll just have to see."

He had the courage to try….he tried, failed, learned, tried again, persevered, kept trying and it paid off.

If Fosbury hadn’t had the courage to try, the high-jump might not be where it is today. He took a shot at greatness.

Wayne Gretzky, the legendary ice hockey star, famously said “You miss 100% of the shots you don’t take”. How many shots do you think he took where he knew with absolute certainty the puck would definitely hit the back of the net?

Angela Duckworth (Grit author) again - “Success is never final; failure is never fatal. It’s courage that counts.”

That’s a great line.  Simon Sinek talks about business being an infinite game…meaning there’s no end, the clock doesn’t hit 0:00, we don’t finish the final inning, it isn’t finite….we keep going.

Success in business isn’t final, and when we fail it’s never fatal – we can start again. But it’s the courage to keep going, to try something different, to learn something different – it’s that courage that often is the differentiator.

 

 

Each of the three lessons talked about here are immensely impactful in their own right – learning from mistakes, demonstrating self-discipline and grit and displaying courage and risk-taking. However, next-level impact happens if we can proactively put all these together.

If we’re courageous enough to give something a go, we keep trying over and over, even when perhaps we don’t want to, we see the failures that will inevitably occur as stepping stones to growth…well that’s powerful.

Jerry Rice, Hall of Fame NFL wide receiver,  I think kind of puts a nice bow on all this when he said “Today I will do what others won’t, so tomorrow I can accomplish what others can’t.”

Now that’s game changing!