Success in Balance

As you can probably already tell, I do quite a bit of reading. Actually as a college professor I am reading all the time (I knew I should have paid more attention in 2nd grade!). I have books all over the place just to keep me thinking and focusing on moving things ahead. You know, trying to be more successful in balance with the rest of my life. I have several easy to read type books from Covey, Wooden etc. in different places and this morning I picked up one by Wooden. I read:

Preparation is the Prize

Cervantes wrote, “The journey is better than the inn.” He is right and that is why I derived my greatest satisfaction out of the preparation the journey day after day, week after week, year after year.

Your journey is the important thing. A score, a trophy, a ribbon is simply the inn.

Thus there were many, many games that gave me as much pleasure as any of the ten national championship games we won, simply because we prepared fully and played near our highest level of ability.

The so-called importance of a particular game didn’t necessarily add to the satisfaction I felt in preparing for the contest. It was the journey I prized above all else. - page 53

Wow, as I read that it just struck me. I have always quoted “success is a journey, not a destination,” but this took it to an all new level. As I reflected some more I started thinking, why Success in Balance is important to me? Why do I see a need? Well, some people are addicted to success. They have gotten so caught up in those moments when they arrive at the inn being the purpose of their lives that they are driven to get to more inns while missing out on so many good thing. That’s my many people are consumed with getting rich.

Furthermore, I think we can all learn from Wooden. We feel great when something great happens during our day. But what about those days when nothing great outside us happens, but we did things the right way. We made progress in areas. We gave it our best. Do you get the same feeling of satisfaction that I do? If we can learn to focus on those days instead of the reward days we too can win the equivalent of ten national championships in our own lives.

One final quote for the day, which seems appropriate:

If one advances confidently in the direction of his dreams, and endeavors to live the life which he has imagined, he will meet with a success unexpected in common hours. Henry David Thoreau

As always, feel free to share your own thoughts in our discussion area.

The problem with popular thinking is that it doesn’t require you to think at all - Kevin Myers

I’m not an answering machine, I’m a questioning machine. If we have all the answers, how come we’re in such a mess? - Douglas Cardinal

Last night I completed my reading of Skill 8 in John Maxwells Thinking for a Change. I must say I was skeptical of this chapter as it talks about questioning popular thinking. But the more I read the more I agreed. Maxwell does not argue that we should question absolutely everything and live our lives in constant change, just for change sake. But he does recommend that each of us take our lives off auto pilot. Some great quote from the chapter include:

It is true: most people are more satisfied with old problems that committed to finding new solutions.

We limit our success when we adopt popular thinking.

We must always remember there is a huge difference between acceptance and intelligence.

So how can we apply this as we strive to achieve Success in Balance with the rest of our lives? For me it means looking at what I do and why. It means to step out of my comfort zone, to look at things, experience things I have not experienced before. It means trying to understand people I really don’t want to understand. As we reach beyond ourselves we achieve better more robust thinking, which can impact all the area of our lives.

The greatest enemy to tomorrow’s success if sometimes today’s success