Hello
Wanted to crank out a post on the blog before headed out to Las Vegas for the Fab 48. Bringing 7 teams out there for what is going to be a great experience no matter what happens because you either win or you learn.
Before I get into it please check out our upcoming events:
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SD High School Fall Showcase – September 7-9 @ Miramar College
Top Gun Fall Youth League – September – December.
Jets Tryouts – September
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I actually have recorded a series of videos that will help complement these blog posts, but I am not going to release them for some time until I edit them down, work on my delivery a bit more, and consolidate my ideas to be a lot more concise. It is a process but I am excited when I can get to the point where I can get them out on the blog quickly. The latest one is a 20 minute rant called “Don’t Get Played.” I am very excited about sharing one day.
LONG TERM VALUE WHAT IS IT
One very influential book to me is George Leonard’s “Mastery.” Here is one of my favorite excerpts regarding how our culture is anti mastery and long term thinking.
“And the sitcoms and soaps, the crime shows, and
MTV all run on the same hyped-up schedule: (1) If
you make smart-assed one-liners for a half hour,
everything will work out fine in time for the closing
commercials. (2) People are quite nasty, don’t work
hard, and get rich quickly. (3) No problem is so serious
that it can’t be resolved in the wink of an eye
as soon as the gleaming barrel of a handgun appears.
(4) The weirdest fantasy you can think of can be realized
instantly and without effort.
In all of this, the specific content isn’t nearly as
destructive to mastery as is the rhythm. One epiphany
follows another. One fantasy is crowded out by
the next. Climax is piled upon climax. There’s no
plateau.”
I got news for everyone…if you are in something for the long run and into mastery, your whole life is spent on a plateau. Once you get to the next level you reside on that plateau albeit that one is at a higher level than the previous one. Most people can’t deal with that and that is one reason why 1% of High School players receive scholarships. The only solution is to LOVE the plateau and the day to day grind. If you don’t love the game you’ll never get good.
80% of results come from fundamentals. Fundamentals can be boring, but they aren’t boring when you are winning and beating really good teams.
I have such a disdain for this type of thinking as you can tell because I am not naturally talented at ANYTHING…so I understand the processes of getting better at many different things. I don’t take any of it for granted and have been on plateaus that have lasted 5-7 years…so I am not going to listen to someone who is upset over not seeing significant gains in 5 months.
Good Horse, Bad Horse
In his book
Zen Mind, Beginner’s Mind, Zen master
Shunryu Suzuki approaches the question of fast
and slow learners in terms of horses. “In our scriptures,
it is said that there are four kinds of horses:
excellent ones, good ones, poor ones, and bad ones.
The best horse will run slow and fast, right and left,
at the driver’s will, before it sees the shadow of the
whip; the second best will run as well as the first one,
just before the whip reaches its skin; the third one
will run when it feels pain on its body; the fourth
will run after the pain penetrates to the marrow of
its bones. You can imagine how difficult it is for the
fourth one to learn to run.
“When we hear this story, almost all of us want to
be the best horse. If it is impossible to be the best
one, we want to be the second best.” But this is a
mistake, Master Suzuki says. When you learn too easily,
you’re tempted not to work hard, not to penetrate
to the marrow of a practice.
Here are some common mindsets that play into ANTI-MASTERY of players that I have seen:
- Playing down winning tournaments with low competition
- Too much focus on plays and not HOW TO PLAY
- Focus and preparation for certain games instead of where skill level should be at certain times
- Not teaching during blowouts
- Magic Pill mentality – Rick Pitino talks about our Microwave culture. Let me pop something into the microwave and it be ready in 1 minute. (Nothing you ever put into the microwave will be healthy for you and even more funny is how toxic even being close to a microwave is for you.) You get the point.
- Joining Cherry Picked Teams that roll the ball out.
- Unhealthy view of how important middle school wins are at expense of skill-set building not playing up
Coincidentally one of the best players in the world right now at the High School level is from Canada.
The last concept is “Long term and short term consequences of an action are often the exact opposite of each other.”
Let’s take an example of eating broccoli vs. a chocolate chip cookie.
Eating broccoli could suck in the short term but has massive long term benefits for your health.
Eating a chocolate cookie is great in the short term but leaves you feeling tired, has poor nutritional value and negatively affects you in the long term.
Not everything is like this, I recommend getting into the habit of being nice to your future self. People are notoriously bad at emotionally estimating how they will feel in the future. I saw a TED talk (If there is one thing I encourage to kids or anyone at all ages is to watch as many videos at www.ted.com as you can) was about long term investing.
He had a computer software program that showed your face now and what you would look like in 30 years on another side of a continuum. The higher you made your retirement savings you could see your future self smiling at the expense of your current self frowning. The more you saved the more exaggerated the facial expressions changed. If you did not save much the older person had the frown and the current self was happy. Point being is there is a sweet spot on how you can operate that will benefit both.
A lot of people also misinterpret long term value and thinking into not enjoying the moment. This is far from the truth and what I am speaking of. A lot of my enjoyment in the moment is from thinking and actions I took 5-10 years earlier so I am reaping the benefits NOW and that will only improve later because of the proper habits being developing today. Enjoy the ride, the outcome is usually anti climatic.
The joy is in the ups and downs, the plateau, the path to mastery. Long Term Value. You either win or you learn. Nothing more, nothing less.
