TO HAVE MENTALITY vs TO BE MENTALITY

To Have mentality .vs. To Be mentality
You work to be the best you can be and then the rest follows. It’s not To Have first. It’s To Be first. You shouldn’t work to have the cars, the money, the houses. Play to be the best you can be and the rest will follow.

PLAYING HARD FOR THE TEAM

"If the coaches tell me to do something that's going to help our team, then that's what I'm going to do," Eric Martin said. "That's why I play hard. I figure if you play hard, you're always helping your team no matter what."

ARE YOU REALLY PART OF A TEAM?

A group may wear the same uniform or work in the same building, but that does not mean it's a team. They must give up the "me first" first!

Being Resilient

"History has demonstrated that the most notable winners usually encountered heartbreaking obstacles before they triumphed. They won because they refused to become discouraged by their defeats."
-B. C. Forbes

Great article

Great article from SI about Trevor Bauer and his path to becoming an MLB 1st round pick.

Here are a few excerpts with a link to the entire article.

"Look, I'm not that big," says Bauer, who is 6'1", 185. "I'm not that strong. I'm not fast. I'm not explosive. I can't jump. I wasn't a natural-born athlete. I was made."

Bauer throws at least six days a week with baseballs, weighted balls or medicine balls. He long-tosses 380 feet, even before starts. He warms up for his outings with about 45 pitches in the bullpen, and during especially long innings when his team is at bat, he heads back to the pen for more work. On his first warmup toss between innings, he crow hops across the mound and unleashes a fastball more than 100 miles per hour.

http://sportsillustrated.cnn.com/vault/article/magazine/MAG1189170/4/index.htm

TEAM- "WITH" AND "FOR" ONE ANOTHER

Difference in winning teams and losing teams: losers stab your back. Winners have your back! In it "with" and "for" one another!

DEALING WITH FAILURE

Failure can paralyze you or re-focus you. Everyone experiences failure--don't ever think it's just you. Refocus and move forward!

What do the great do in the off-season? WORK TO BECOME BETTER

The following comes from an SI.com article on LeBron James.

He's working out twice a day, trying to erase some of the sting that's still there after the Heat lost to the Dallas Mavericks in the NBA finals.

"Right now I've just been focusing on being a better player, working on my game every single day," James said at a news conference before the AP interview. "Like I said, the Dallas Mavericks were a great team and they deserved to win that championship. And I'll just use that as motivation coming into this season."

He's also trying to deliver on his vow to be even better whenever the Heat resume play, saying he's been in Houston at times this offseason to learn post play from one of the game's all-time greats, former Rockets star Hakeem Olajuwon.

"I look at what he was able to do throughout his career," James said. "Unbelievable talent. Multiple champion. Just to see how he was able to dominate in the low post, for me as an individual, I just try to look at some of the things I feel I need to get better at and hit home at it. Our team becomes better if I continue to get better and that's what it's about."

Read the entire article: http://bit.ly/o6vgH0

LITTLE THINGS

"One day during practice, a visitor observed legendary Coach (Paul "Bear") Bryant doing something that aroused his curiosity. From time to time during practice, the coach would reach into his pocket, pull out a crumbled little piece of paper, read it, and then put it back in his pocket. The visitor watched him do this several times during practice, and finally mustered up the courage to ask the coach what was written on the paper. Coach Bryant simply smiled, pulled out the paper, and let the visitor read it himself. It said: It's the itty bitty, teeny tiny things that get you beat."


In sports, the little things can be the difference between a sub par year and a championship season. In baseball, taking those five extra swings every day and taking those ten extra ground balls can be the difference between a good player and a great player. In life, doing the little things can also change our lives tremendously.




"If you take care of the little things, you never have one big thing to worry about." - Cal Ripken Jr.--

Planes crashing - teams crashing

from Bob Starkey

Those that know me best know that I'm deathly afraid of flying. That's right -- I've chosen a profession that takes to me through the airways on a regular basis! So last week I was reading a book, "Outliers" by Malcolm Gladwell and as my plane was taxing down the runway for takeoff I turned the page to a chapter titled "The Ethnic Theory of Plane Crashes."

Even I had to chuckle at the irony!

But it ended up being an amazing chapter that has thoughts and theories that translate to a team that may "crash" and some of the reasons. Here is some of what I learned from that chapter. My thoughts are in blue:

In a typical crash, for example, the weather is poor -- not terrible, necessarily, but bad enough that the pilot feels a little bit more stressed than usual (a little adversity usually is behind a team that "crashes" and it usually isn't as bad as the team crashing thinks).

In an overwhelming number of crashes, the plane ie behind schedule, so the pilots are hurrying (Coach Wooden -- "be quick but don't hurry").

In 52 percent of crashes, the pilot at the time of the accident has been awake for twelve hours or more, meaning that he is tired and not thinking sharply (teams that over train or are not fresh are possible "crash" victims).

And 44 percent of the time, the two pilots have never flown together before, so they're not comfortable with each other. Then the errors start -- and it's not just one error. The typical accident involves seven consecutive errors (how many times does a team fall apart -- not because of one turnover, but because of extended poor play and mental mistakes).

The kind of errors that cause plane crashes are invariably errors of teamwork and communication (I repeat "errors of teamwork and communication). One pilot knows something important and somehow doesn't tell the other something pilot. One pilot does something wrong, and the other pilot doesn't catch the error.

The whole flight-deck design is intended to be operated by two people, and that operation works best when you have one person checking the other, or both people willing to participate (know and executing your roles).