Alexandersmap

    Category: Sports

    • Applied Focus

      “Is it interesting or important?” — Mike Vrabel, New England Patriots Head Coach

      After a couple of days away from home, the cat is especially expressive, meowing relentlessly for attention. Attention given, she is quiet for a few seconds, then begins again. There’s no creative space for writing with a cat meowing for your full attention. But that doesn’t matter, does it? This is the time to write, and so the writing happens anyway.

      The world doesn’t care if we want to focus.

      Is it interesting that the Louvre was just robbed in 7 minutes? Yes, because the robbers changed the game by shortening the time between detection and response, which will impact security globally. When you think about things like security for a living, that fact is more than interesting, but important. It’s too soon for all the answers, but finding more effective ways to detect, delay and respond to future threats is what security professionals will focus on next, even as others search for the robbers from this event. It’s a tragic development for art lovers either way, both for the loss and for the potential restrictions to access it may create in an attempt to mitigate the impact of future threats.

      Interesting will distract us all day if we let it.

      Applying focus is how we take charge of our days. After giving attention, and food to the cat, she’s still inclined to meow into my creative space. Noise-cancelling headphones playing Mark Knopfler’s Wild Theme on repeat will allow me to finish this blog post, and then pay attention to the cat again. What’s important to her is not necessarily important to me in this moment. The dog, bless her, gives me precious presence but also space to think.

      We become what we focus on the most.

      How do we win the day? One small win at a time. The pets deserve some attention first thing in the morning, but after that, our priorities deserve a little attention too. What are the important tasks that must be focused on to make today successful? What can we do to enhance our ability to accomplish these tasks? Interesting steals from important every day. It’s up to us to focus on the right thing, right now.

      So focus on the important at the expense of interesting.

    • Moving Through Us

      “Greatness is a transitory experience. It is never consistent. It depends in part upon the myth-making imagination of humankind. The person who experiences greatness must have a feeling for the myth he is in. He must reflect what is projected upon him. And he must have a strong sense of the sardonic. This is what uncouples him from belief in his own pretensions. The sardonic is all that permits him to move within himself. Without this quality, even occasional greatness will destroy a man.”
      — Frank Herbert, Dune

      You know when you’re in the midst of greatness. You can see it with your own eyes, feel it in your nervous system. There are so few who reach that level, and fewer still who can stay there for any amount of time, that it’s memorable when it washes over a moment. Tom Brady had a long dance with greatness. So did Michael Phelps. Sydney McLaughlin-Levrone is currently in the midst of greatness in the 400 meter hurdles and dash. Greatness is myth-like because it’s just so far beyond merely being good.

      To be sardonic is to be cynical, highly skeptical, and maybe a little sarcastic. Tom Brady had the perfect foil in Bill Belichick. We all need someone that keeps our ego in check and knock us down a notch when we begin to believe the hype. The alternative is to get too big for one’s britches. How many rise to greatness only to stumble back down to average when they succumb to the myth?

      People love the hero’s journey, but they learn to hate the person who is on top for too long. Maybe that’s because they keep the next hero from rising all the way to the top. It’s the rare few who are loved for their greatness because they exude something beyond the norm. Usain Bolt ran with a brash joyfulness that thrilled even the most casual observer.

      We may aspire to greatness but still be humble. Like a writer or artist who view themselves as a vehicle for the muse to bring art to the world, each of us are similarly bringing something beyond ourselves to whatever it is that we do. We ought to do it exceptionally well, that we may earn the right to do it again tomorrow. And maybe even better. We just can’t get so full of ourselves that the greatness has no room to move through us.

    • Playing the Right Game

      “The person who gets 1 shot needs everything to go right.
      The person who gets 1000 shots is going to score at some point.
      Find a way to play the game that ensures you get a lot of shots.”
      — @JamesClear

      “You miss 100 percent of the shots you don’t take.” — Wayne Gretzky

      Too many of us won’t take the shot. We settle for the pass instead. There’s nothing wrong with a pass now and then, for sometimes it’s just not the right shot to take in the moment. But action and inaction are both habits. We must learn to act boldly when we see our shot.

      It’s easy to talk of action, but tougher to summon up the courage to act. At least in the beginning, until we become accustomed to boldness. The trick is to put ourselves in the right game, with the right players, where action is both accepted and expected. When we look around at the players around us, in the game we’re currently playing, we ought to ask ourselves, is this the right game for me?

      The answer to that question is a prompt for action. Be bold in that moment. Take the shot. Or find another game. There is no overtime.

    • Building Upon the Dream

      “Qué lindo es soñar despierto, he says. How lovely it is to dream while you are awake. Dream while you’re awake Andre. Anybody can dream while they’re asleep, but you need to dream all the time, and say your dreams out loud, and believe in them.” — Andre Agassi, quoting Gil Reyes, Open: An Autobiography

      I detected movement in the pool, a light ripple that telegraphed swimming. Walking over to see what was generating the ripple, I saw a mouse treading water while desperately trying to find a way out of the pool. Isn’t it funny that the very thing I might attempt to kill if it were in my home is something I immediately set about rescuing when I found it floundering in deep water? We can’t possibly kill something that so desperately wants to be alive, and go to great lengths to save it.

      But what of our dreams?

      Qué lindo es soñar despierto… How nice it is to daydream. For in dreams we find ourselves. And begin to believe you might just reach them. Which is exactly what Thoreau pointed out to us:

      “If you have built castles in the air, your work need not be lost; that is where they should be. Now put the foundations under them.” ― Henry David Thoreau, Walden

      Dreaming is the necessary first step, but too many forget to build upon the dream. The foundation is the required next step in the process of getting there. We’ve all neglected this next step a few times in our own lives—for the dreaming is easy, while the building is hard. But build we must to get where we dream of going.

      Have you seen The Secret Life of Walter Mitty? It’s a frustrating, tedious movie when Walter is daydreaming all the time. It becomes compelling when he finally acts. The message is clear: We must wake up from our daydream and act upon it to reach excellence.

      We can’t let our dreams flounder and drown. Act! While there’s still time! For we can’t tread forever.

    • Clearing the Hurdles

      “Life will throw everything but the kitchen sink in your path, and then it will throw the kitchen sink. It’s your job to avoid the obstacles. If you let them stop you or distract you, you’re not doing your job, and failing to do your job will cause regrets that paralyze you more than a bad back.” — Andre Agassi, Open

      When you witness excellence in action, it’s hard to comprehend the work that went into the performance. Seeing Sydney McLaughlin destroy her own 400 meter hurdles record is awe-inspiring because she does the incomprehensible. But the work that brought about the moment isn’t ours to see, or feel. The hurdles aren’t the only obstacle she had to clear on her way to a record-breaking performance—she had to clear every other distraction along the way to get to it. People like McLaughlin or Agassi or Tom Brady are anomalies to the rest of us. They’re obsessively focused and a bit quirky in their habits. Most of us balk at the price of greatness, for them it’s simply the act of doing your job.

      Disciplined routine is the answer. Doing your job is the moment-to-moment bias towards productive action and good decisions. Anyone in New England will hear Bill Belichick’s own words ring in that Agassi quote. Do your job… and do it well. It’s a simple thing to grasp, must harder to execute with an undisciplined mind. We must get up daily and do the work that calls to us. No excuses needed, you either do or do not, there is no try (thanks Yoda). This is a tough mindset to acquire, but it’s required for reaching excellence.

      “Excellence is the next five minutes”, as Tom Peters put it, “or nothing at all”. We get too caught up in excuses that lie beyond the immediate. Surely we must know where we’re going, but we must then get beyond long term thinking, for it’s a form of procrastination. We often kick things down the curb that we ought to be doing right now. Planning isn’t doing, so we mustn’t tell ourselves what we’re going to do, we mustn’t tell ourselves anything at all, really. We must friggin’ do it.

      There are so many obstacles to navigate in life that it can be overwhelming. But most of it is BS playing on a loop between our ears. The only way to break that loop is with a viable habit loop that forces us to execute in the now. Excellence is the next five minutes, or maybe the next 50.68 seconds, or maybe just this very instant. What we do with this moment determines so much of who we’ll be at the finish line. Don’t regret the moment.

    • The Edge

      “Development is all about growth. Your body starts to grow when, when your body says, ‘No more.’ That’s when things start to happen. Teams become great. Players become great when you get to The Edge.”
      “The Edge is where average stops and elite begins.” — Urban Meyer

      Sure, there’s a bit of football locker room bravado in this quote, but Meyer is right on point. Our growth happens when we push beyond our limits—beyond the edge of our comfort zone. This certain applies in fitness, but equally well in our creative life. We either push beyond the limit or we languish in mediocrity. That may seem harsh, or maybe obvious, depending on how we accept our current position near the edge.

      Think about it: the accepted method for quickly mastering a language is immersion. You plunge well beyond your comfort zone into a place where you have to figure things out or you’ll fail. Isn’t that pushing beyond an edge?

      We place ourselves into positions where comfort rules growth. How can we expect growth in these moments? We create participation trophies and expect everyone to celebrate just the same, and wonder why we aren’t seeing more people break through the average. Don’t get me wrong, everyone matters, but without differentiation and rewarding the individual pursuit of excellence what becomes of us?

      This writing every day thing has been informative, often challenging, perhaps mundane and repetitive for the reader (sorry) and often eclectic (not sorry), but it’s been a steady push to find the edge. Blogging is an investment in thyself, shared with the world. But there’s an edge that hasn’t been pushed through yet, waiting for the skill and gumption of the writer to catch up.

      We can’t be elite in our craft until we break through our boundaries. We can either accept average or find more in ourself. Life rewards those who break through that damned edge.

    • Tom Brady in Five Quotes

      What do you do with consistent excellence? How do you process it? How do the average masses view the brilliant contribution of the few? Many dismiss it as trickery, cheating, luck, or chance. This minimizes the painful gap of comparison. For others, recognizing that brilliance leads to hate for what it brings: defeat and frustration. Excellence is a mirror, and when we look at it we see our own shortcomings.

      Tom Brady retired. Why is that a surprise? He’s 45 as I write this, won 7 Super Bowl rings for two teams and long ago became the G.O.A.T. for those who celebrate the level of excellence he’s reached. Those who would knock him down a notch or two for perceived slights or for the extreme discipline he lives by grudgingly note the results. This isn’t a guy who does things half-assed.

      When you live in New England, and you’ve lived through the really, really dark days of professional sports in New England when every team was losing in heartbreaking fashion every year from 1987 until 2001, well, you recognize the difference that one or two people can make in a game, or on a team, or in a region. Tom Brady was a sparkplug for New England, and winning became contagious. It became expected. Because the standard was raised, and it remains higher than it was before he rose up to lead that first Super Bowl win in the aftermath of 9/11 for a team called Patriots.

      There are a million Tom Brady quotes out there. I mean, the guy played Pro Football for 22 years; you accumulate a lot of quotes in all that time! But here are five that I found most enlightening about the man. Thanks Tom, it’s been fun seeing excellence on display for so many years:

      “It’s never come easy for me. I don’t think my mind allows me to rest ever. I have, I think, a chip on my shoulder, and some deep scars that I don’t think were healed.”

      “A lot of times I find that people who are blessed with the most talent don’t ever develop that attitude, and the ones who aren’t blessed in that way are the most competitive and have the biggest heart.”

      “I think I have a certain respect for people, you know. And I guess a lot of times I expect that respect to go both ways.”

      “If you waste your time and energy on things that don’t matter in the outcome of the game, then when you get to the game you’re not going to give your teammates the best that you have to offer.”

      “I knew I became a professional when I stop paying attention to what time it was.”