The following is an excerpt from my new book 8
Attributes of Great Achievers, Volume 2.
Humble leaders focus on doing
their personal best and are not worried about how they are doing in relation to
others. The legendary UCLA Coach John Wooden provides a powerful example of
this principle. He wrote, “I never talked about winning or beating an opponent.
In fact, I rarely mentioned the opponent’s name. One player joked that just
before games our manager would go to the lobby and buy a program in order to
know who the team was playing that day. ‘Let them worry about us,’ was my
philosophy. My job, and the team’s job, was to get us as close to being as good
as we could get.”
“In 1962, UCLA reached the Final
Four for the first time ever. We did it with a group of young men Sports Illustrated described as having
‘no height, no center, no muscle, no poise, no experience, no substitutes, and
no chance.’” UCLA lost seven of their first eleven games that year, but
everyone “kept working hard and improving. . . . Their effort produced dramatic
results as the season progressed, and UCLA won 14 of the final 18 games, became
Pac-8 champions, and went to the NCAA tournament. In the regionals at Provo,
Utah, the Bruins outscored Utah State and then Oregon State to advance to the
Final Four. . . . This was quite a surprise to most basketball fans around the
country. Our 72-70 loss in the last seconds of the Final Four semifinals to the
defending and eventual champion, Cincinnati, provided great evidence of how one
can ‘lose’ and still win. . . . Cincinnati’s best was slightly better than ours.
. . . The final score can never make you a loser when you’ve done your best. .
. . What is success? For many it’s trophies or blue ribbons. . . . But I don’t
measure it like that. The highest success is in your effort—giving it your
personal best.”
One of John Wooden’s most
influential teachers was his dad. His dad taught him early and often, “Johnny,
don’t try to be better than somebody else, but never cease trying to be the
best you can be.”
References
(John Wooden with Steve Jamison, My Personal Best (New York: McGraw-Hill, 2004), 4, 114-115, 119,
120-123, 195)
Learn more at www.CameronCTaylor.com
