Basketball coaching legend John Wooden recently celebrated his 99th birthday. He hasn’t coached in 34 years, retiring at age 65, but he has certainly remained in the public eye through several books and public appearances. He’s such a treasure of wisdom for sports and life.
With his birthday in the news, I saw a link someone shared to one of those public appearances, his TEDtalk in 2001, and wanted to share a few thoughts on it.
The focus of Wooden’s talk was his definition of success:
…peace of mind attained only through self-satisfaction in knowing you made the effort to do the best of which you’re capable.
Wooden says, “If you make the effort to do the best of which you’re capable, try and improve the situation that exists for you, I think that’s success. And I don’t think others can judge that.”
Whatever you’re doing, whatever your line of work. Wooden believes it’s about giving your best effort.
Did you catch that? It’s not necessarily about winning.
Winning is a product of what you do.
Wooden says, “…if you make effort to do the best you can regularly, the results will be about what they should be. Not necessary to what you would want them to be, but they will be about what they should, and only you will know whether you can do that.”
That’s a quote every youth sports coach should digest.
Wooden also quotes Cervantes, who said “The journey is better than the end.”
Yes, it’s the getting there where the real work happens, the “fun” as Wooden says.
Indeed.
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