I’ve noticed something lately I want to address….
Many of you gauge your success by looking at the results in your life rather than focusing on the quality and quantity of your work each day.
Your happiness, fulfillment and even your satisfaction in life is based on the scoreboard you keep referring too. I’m definitely one to suggest tracking and accountability, but NOT if it affects your self confidence, self esteem, and even your level of happiness in life.
You must learn to have VISION, but focus on the PRESENT. Doing the best job you can in the moment. Also, you must realize that HOW YOU DO ANYTHING IS HOW YOU DO EVERYTHING.
I see examples everyday of entrepreneurs driving their activities based on the scoreboard in just one area of their life…explain…
I’m going to give you some feedback I learned a long time ago from one of my favorite books by John Wooden called Wooden on LEADERSHIP…You will learn that in order to be successful you need to be a leader and in order to influence and have impact you will need leadership skills.
There is no better example of this than John Wooden…let me explain for those of you who don’t know who he is.
John Robert Wooden (October 14, 1910 – June 4, 2010) was an American basketball player and head coach at the University of California, Los Angeles. Nicknamed the “Wizard of Westwood,” he won ten NCAA national championships in a 12-year period as head coach at UCLA, including a record seven in a row. No other team has won more than four[1]in a row in Division I college men’s or women’s basketball.[2][3][4] Within this period, his teams won an NCAA men’s basketball record 88 consecutive games.
In his book on Leadership he talks a bit about the topic of “Don’t Look at the Scoreboard”.
He gives many great lessons but I particularly like the Rules to Lead by that he gives which are:
1-Identify Team Goals, Then File Them Away- To create FOCUS you must know where you are going, but them hyper focus on the present. Goals are in the future. Your activity and commitment to execution and growth doesn’t exist in the future.
2-Give Full Respect to Each Competitor- Respect All, Fear None. Don’t change your game plan for competitors in life or business because of fear. Just execute the best you can in the now.
3-LongTerm Success Requires Short-Term Focus- This is the KEY…Don’t Look at the Scoreboard…rather, focus on Improvement…Not tomorrow, Not next week. Today.
I’d like to read you a short note from his book that was a Comment published by Dave Meyers, one of Wooden’s 2 x National Champion Players, about Wooden. I think it gives an excellent example of how Wooden taught and coached leadership from the perspective of someone he coached daily. I want you to pay attention to the little details in this…
Page 217 of Book from Wooden on Leadership
Here is the bottom Line…too many of us are letting the scoreboard in life get us down. We are allowing the past and future measurements of our life affect our mindset, our attitudes and our happiness levels. As a result, we are less effective in the present. But more importantly, we are unable to make the true impact on the world that we were destined to make. So, I encourage you to the following:
1-Know where you are going and what your goals are with a CLEAR VISION, but
2-File your goals and vision away each day and focus on the Grind…Focus on Executing Your Plan.
3-Then, when you periodically refer back to the scoreboard with true reflection and evaluation, you will know that you left it all on the field and did everything in your power to create results.
This my friends is the true recipe for success, and this is the recipe for true impact on the world.
