Merry Christmas

Here's a great article for Christmas Day: "Christmas is the Most Unsentimental Way of Looking at Life."

Tim Keller writes:

There has never been a gift offered that makes you swallow your pride to the depths that the gift of Jesus Christ requires us to do. Christmas means that we are so lost, so unable to save ourselves, that nothing less than the death of the Son of God himself could save us. That means you are not somebody who can pull yourself together and live a moral and good life.

Christmas, therefore, is the most unsentimental, realistic way of looking at life. It does
not say, “Cheer up! If we all pull together we can make the world a better place.” The Bible never counsels indifference to the forces of darkness, only resistance, but it supports no illusions that we can defeat them ourselves. Christianity does not agree with the optimistic thinkers who say, “We can fix things if we try hard enough.” Nor does it agree with the pessimists who see only a dystopian future.

The message of Christianity is, instead, “Things really are this bad, and we can’t heal or save ourselves. Things really are this dark — nevertheless, there is hope.” The Christmas message is that “on those living in the land of deep darkness a light has dawned.”

10 Lessons I Learned From Basic SEAL Training By Admiral McRaven

Here's an absolutely awesome commencement address delivered by Admiral William H. McRaven to the University of Texas graduating class of 2014:

Herer are the ten lessons he learned from basic SEAL training:

1. Start off by making your bed.
2. Find someone to help you paddle.
3. Measure a person by the size of their heart, not the size of their flippers.
4. Get over being a sugar cookie and keep moving forward.
5. Don’t be afraid of the circuses.
6. Sometimes you have to slide down the obstacle head first.
7. Don’t back down from the sharks.
8. Be your very best in the darkest moment.
9. Start singing when you’re up to your neck in mud.
10. Don’t ever, ever ring the bell.

How We Play Football In Seattle By Richard Sherman

I love The Players' Tribune. If you've never visited the site, you should check it out. It's a:

New media company that provides athletes with a platform to connect directly with their fans, in their own words. Founded by Derek Jeter, The Players’ Tribune publishes first-person stories from athletes, providing unique insight into the daily sports conversation. Through impactful and powerful long- and short-form stories, video series and podcasts, The Players’ Tribune brings fans closer than ever to the games they love.

Here's an article written by Richard Sherman called How We Play Football in Seattle. I especially like two sections. The first:

By the end of my second season, Coach Carroll’s philosophy had started to manifest
itself. You could tell, because it felt like college. When you’re getting ready to make the jump to the NFL, people tell you that it’s a business. That you’re not going to make friends. That everybody is trying to butter their own bread, trying to feed their families. That it’s every man for himself. Then, you get to Seattle and play for Pete Carroll and ... 

Nah. It ain’t like that. Not here.

I've heard a lot of the same thing since moving to Pittsburgh: basically, "this isn't college"; "pros are selfish"; "you can't force them to think that way"; "you can't build a really great team culture at the professional level." I disagree with all of it. I love reading about what Pete Carroll (long time college coach) has done in professional football.

The other section is about Earl Thomas:

If you’re having a tough day at practice, Earl [Thomas] might come over and clap his hands together — SMACK! — right in your face. “C’mon. Wake up!” On another team or in another camp, a guy might see that as a sign of disrespect. His machismo might kick in and he might get defensive like, Why you comin’ at me like that, bro? But in Seattle, when somebody like Earl does that, there’s no conflict or confrontation because you know he’s coming from a place of love. He’s trying to wake you up and get you to where you’re supposed to be. Everyone knows Earl is the energy — the spark plug in our practices — and that you can depend on him to be flying around, giving it 100% every day. If there’s a day when you feel like you just don’t have it, you can look to Earl and find it. He’s a guy who’ll break his back to help you, and he expects the same in return. Nothing less. You respect that.

High performance teams need Earl Thomas.

Letter To My Younger Self By David Robinson

I had the opportunity to coach at the US Naval Academy for a year and half. It was a fascinating experience and I now see references to the Academy all over the place -- references that went clear over my head a few years ago. This morning, I read a great article on The Player's Tribune featuring USNA alum David Robinson. Here are a couple of my favorite parts:

How do you build a solid vocabulary? The same way you build a house. Brick by brick. Word by word. Night after night. The same rule applies to learning to swim, or developing a post move, or building a business. Preparation is everything. This is a simple but undeniable truth that is completely lost on you at 18 years old.

When you fail the swim test, don’t get too bent out of shape. Just remember how your father built up your vocabulary with that thick dictionary. Practice, son.

Kobe Bryant's Practice Habits

Here's a good article written for The Players' Tribune on Kobe Bryant's practice habits: The Secret I Learned From Kobe Bryant by Buddy Hield. Kobe's greatness (winning + impact + endurance) is a direct result of his individual excellence ("deliberate actions, ordinary in themselves, performed consistently and carefully, compounded together, added up over time" - Daniel Chambliss).

Don't Do What Makes You Happy, Do What Makes You Great

Here's some inspiration from a commencement speech given by Charlie Day, creator of It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia:

The section I wanted to highlight begins at 16:41, but there are good stories earlier in the speech as well. Here's the part I especially liked:

People will tell you to do what makes you happy, but all this has been hard work. And I'm not always happy. I don't think you should just do what makes you happy. Do what makes you great. Do what's uncomfortable and scary and hard but pays off in the long run. Be willing to fail. Let yourself fail. Fail in the way and place where you would be proud to fail. Fail and pick yourself up and fail again.

Click here for the full transcript.

Success Isn't A Straight Line

I've watched nearly every video on Brett Ledbetter's whatdriveswinning.com and nearly every one is gold. Here's a good one featuring PJ Fleck from the 2016 conference: 

I can appreciate his approach to building a program from ground zero and I think it's a really good perspective to keep in mind. Here are a few quotes:

Success isn't a straight line.

[Despite being 1-11 in year one,] behind the scenes we were winning; the process of winning was taking form.

X. We Are Grateful For Everything, Entitled To Nothing

This core value comes from Jack Clark, head coach of the Cal men's rugby team. Since he took over the program in 1984, Cal Rugby has won 22 National Championships (through 2013). Beyond winning, Clark does a really good job articulating his approach to building a high performance culture. Jen Sinkler did a great interview with Clark for her website. Here's a section:

Our mindset is how we filter our values and how we talk about them. I think it’s important now, more than ever before, because there is a lot of entitlement. But we say our mindset is “entitled to nothing, grateful for everything.” We’re really happy when people do something for us and somebody washes our clothes or somebody puts on a meal for us. Anything that we get, we feel really grateful for it but we don’t really think we’re entitled to much. I mean you ask how do you become resilient? Well, that’s
kind of it. I mean, you don’t expect much — not from the ref, not from the opposition. If you’re playing into the wind in both halves, that’s just how it is. We just don’t expect to get a break. That makes you tougher in a way. We don’t spend a lot of time worrying about what happened to us and why did it happen to us and woe is us. We just get on with what’s the next most important thing, which is our definition, by the way, for mental toughness. We borrowed that definition from a really good Australian cricketer. I always thought it was the cleanest definition of mental toughness I ever heard.

And here's Clark speaking at Brett Ledbetter's What Drives Winning Conference in 2015:

IX. We Take Personal Accountability For Our Actions And The Actions Of Our Teammates

A few years back, I read QBQ: The Question Behind The Question by John Miller after hearing it was mandatory reading for employees working at Dave Ramsey's company. The book is about personal accountability. It's about asking what you can do to improve the situation rather than assigning blame. The opposite of taking personal accountability is playing the victim. A good line from the book:

We always have a choice. Always. Realizing this and taking responsibility for our choices is a big step toward making great things happen in our lives.

On high performance teams, it's not enough to take accountability for your actions alone. You must also take accountability for the actions of your teammates. If your teammate fails, the team fails. You fail. The verse on our crest at Messiah was Proverbs 27:17:

As iron sharpens iron so one man sharpens another.

It's interesting: after including 'we take personal accountability for our actions and the actions of our teammates' in the Starting XI, I came across the Navy SEAL's SEAL Code. One of their values is very similar (almost identical):

Take personal responsibility for your actions and the actions of your teammates.

Here's more on the SEAL Code.

VII. We Sweep The Sheds

'We sweep the sheds' is about servant leadership and it's the first core value of the New Zealand All Blacks rugby team. Few (if any) teams in any sport can match the All Blacks record of dominance over the last 100 years. Looking at recent history, their win rate is over 86 percent since rugby's professional era began in 1995. Legacy: What the All Blacks Can Teach Us about the Business of Life by James Kerr provides great insight into the All Blacks organizational culture. Ian Brooks wrote a great summary of the book, highlighting the teams' core values (The First XV). Brooks writes:

Before leaving the dressing room at the end of a game, some of the top players in the team – including Richie McCaw and Dan Carter – stop and tidy up. They literally and figuratively 'sweep the sheds.' It is an example of personal humility, a cardinal All Blacks value. Though it might seem strange for a team of imperious dominance, humility is core to their culture. The All Blacks believe that it’s impossible to achieve success without
having your feet planted firmly on the ground.

Also on servant leadership, there's a great passage in Gates of Fire by Stephen Pressfield:

I will tell his majesty what a king is. A king does not abide within his tent while his men bleed and die upon the field. A king does not dine while his men go hungry, nor sleep when they stand at watch upon the wall. A king does not command his men’s loyalty through fear, nor purchase it with gold; he earns their love by the sweat of his own back and the pains he endures for their sake. That which comprises the harshest burden a king lifts first and sets down last. A king does not require service of those he leads, but provides it to them. He serves them, not they him.

And finally, I just recently bought Why Leaders Eat Last by Simon Sinek and I'm excited to read it. Here's what's on the back cover:

Leaders are the ones who run headfirst into the unknown. They rush toward danger. They put their own interests aside to protect us or pull us into the future. Leaders would sooner sacrifice what is theirs to save what is ours. And they would never sacrifice what is ours to save what is theirs. This is what it means to be a leader. It means they choose to go first into danger, headfirst into the unknown. And when we feel sure they will keep us safe, we will march behind them and walk tirelessly to see their visions come to life and proudly call ourselves their followers.

Here's a video presentation by Sinek on "Why Leaders Eat Last":

V. We Walk Like Champions

'We walk like champions' was one of our core values at Messiah. It's about action rooted in identity. It's about doing what you ought to do because of who you are (or who you want to be) regardless of how you feel -- or the result or where you finish in the standings or some other set of circumstances outside of your control. We are champions therefore we act like champions even when we don't feel like champions. Here are related excerpts from Mere Christianity, Resilience and Champions: The Making of Olympic Swimmers:

1. Mere Christianity by C.S. Lewis
In a chapter called "Let's Pretend," C.S. Lewis writes:

The story is about someone who had to wear a mask; a mask which made him look much nicer than he really was. He had to wear it for years. And when he took it off he found his own face had grown to fit it. He was now really beautiful. What had begun as disguise had become a reality. Even on the human level, you know, there are two kinds of pretending. There is a bad kind, where the pretense is there instead of the real thing; as when a man pretends he is going to help you instead of really helping you. But there is also a good kind, where the pretense leads up to the real thing. When you are not feeling particularly friendly but know you ought to be, the best thing you can do, very often, is to put on a friendly manner and behave as if you were a nicer person than you actually are. And in a few minutes, as we have all noticed, you will be really feeling friendlier than you were. Very often the only way to get a quality in reality is to start behaving as if you had it already.

2. Resilience by Eric Greitens
Resilience is a collection of letters written by former Navy Seal Eric Greitens to another former Seal, Zach Walker, plagued by depression, alcoholism and debilitating lack of purpose. In the chapter on "Identity," Greitens asks Walker to think about the following three things in relationship to one another: feelings, action and identity. Greitens writes:

We tend to assume, without really thinking about it, that everything starts with our feelings, that our feelings are in control. Feelings lead to action. Action shapes our identity.

He then challenges Walker to think about feelings, action and identity in the opposite direction (identity, action, feelings):

You begin by asking, 'Who am I going to be?' You decided to be courageous again. So what's next? Act that way. Act with courage. And here comes the part that's so simple it's easy to miss: the way you act will shape the way you feel. You act with courage and immediately your fears start to shrink and you begin to grow. If you want to feel differently, act differently.

3. Champions: The Making of Olympic Swimmers by Daniel Chambliss
Chambliss wrote Champions after observing the practice habits of Olympic swimmers ahead of the 1988 Olympic Games. He writes:

They become champions by doing what needs to be done, by doing everything right, by concentrating on all the silly little details that others overlook. What makes them champions is the knowledge -- and the action following from that knowledge -- that champions are only real people, not gods, and all that it takes to be a champion is to do what champions do. 

III. We Grind

I'm using grind as the verb form of grit, a term popularized by psychologist Angela Duckworth. After several years teaching middle school, Duckworth left teaching to study what characteristic most accurately predicted student performance. In a popular Ted talk, she reveals the answer is not social intelligence, good looks, physical health or even IQ; the answer is grit. Duckworth defines grit: "Grit is passion and perseverance for very long-term goals. Grit is having stamina. Grit is sticking with your future, day in, day out, not just for the week, not just for the month, but for years, and working really hard to make that future a reality. Grit is living life like it's a marathon, not a sprint." Here's the full video:

The definition of grind (grit) I've chosen to use is: "working longer without switching objectives;
hard work plus concentration."

For more on grit, there's a great article about Duckworth visiting Pete Carroll and the Seattle Seahawks organization. For even more, check out her book Grit: The Power and Passion of Perseverance. I have not read it yet, but it comes highly recommended and it's on my list. 

Related to the topic, I came across this line in Eugene Peterson's Run with the Horses: "The mark of a certain kind of genius is the ability and energy to keep returning to the same task relentlessly, imaginatively, curiously, for a lifetime." Peterson made that statement in 1983 about the prophet Jeremiah. Grit may be a newly popularized term, but it's certainly not a new idea. 

II. Humbly, We Put The Team First Regardless Of Our Circumstances

On high performance teams, decisions are made in the best interest of the collective. The collective is defined as a group of individuals singularly focused on something bigger than themselves. I took the second half of that definition from Jim Collins' definition of humility: "being in service to something much bigger than yourself; the humility comes from realizing how much bigger that something is." Collins offered that definition when asked about Steve Jobs as as humble leader. Here is a link to the full interview.

Row The Boat

Here's a good article written by PJ Fleck, head football coach at Western Michigan University. What impresses me most about Fleck is his capacity to stay on message. He's relentless. I've watched a dozen or so YouTube videos featuring Fleck and they're all the same. He was delivering that message at 1-11 in 2013; at 8-5 in 2014; at 8-5 in 2015; and he continues to deliver that message in 2016, on the verge of a perfect season. WMU's identity and process have remained the same since Fleck's arrival at WMU. Only results (and media attention) have changed.

Hey Josh

Below is a letter I wrote to a friend at the beginning of the year. He's a young graduate who hosted a retreat of sorts to help other young graduates transition from college to the real world. It's not easy for everyone. It wasn't for me. Here is what I wrote:

--

Hey Josh,

Thanks for including me in this. I went through some Messiah withdrawal myself and know some guys really struggle after graduation so I think it's a cool idea. I read a book recently called A Man's Search for Meaning by Viktor Frankl. It really impacted me and I think it has some direct application to what you guys are trying to do with young alums. Frankl was a Jewish psychologist who survived
Auschwitz then wrote about his experience from a very unique perspective. The book doesn't have much to say about God, but it does have great insight into humanity -- insight that becomes even more powerful when you filter it through a Christian lens and recognize that those things are a part of God's design. His main premise is that man is ultimately searching for meaning (versus power or happiness as some psychologists would argue) and that he can find meaning through:
                                                                           
1. Purposeful work
2. Meaningful relationships (love)
3. Courage in the face of suffering

Messiah provided guys with both purposeful work and meaningful relationships (and you could make a case for suffering as well) and those things gave meaning to guys' four years on the team. For a lot of guys, however, graduation leaves them without purposeful work and without the same meaningful relationships (those relationships still exist, but the context is different). So, for whatever it's worth, my advice to young Messiah grads is: seek out purposeful work and meaningful relationships. (Suffering is not something to pursue and should be avoided if possible, Frankl says, but one can find meaning in suffering if forced into it.) Purposeful work might be found in a job. It might not. It might require a career change. It might not. It might mean finding purpose in the job you already have. It might mean throwing yourself into work that doesn't pay the bills. Whatever it is, don't be afraid of work. We were created for it. As for seeking out meaningful relationships, my best advice is to find a good church and get involved (versus just showing up on Sunday mornings). Can you be a Christian and not go to church? Sure, but that's not the way it's supposed to be and you deprive yourself if you try to go at it alone. A life filled with purposeful work and meaningful relationships is a good life.

Do with that what you like, but those are my thoughts on the topic.

Hope the weekend goes well!

Viss

IV. We Choose To Be Positive And Enthusiastic

Attitude is a choice and it's one of very few things we have complete control over. One of the better books I've read is called A Man's Search for Meaning by Viktor Frankl. Frankl was a Jewish psychologist who survived Auschwitz then wrote about his experience from an extremely unique perspective (as an expert in human psychology).  If anyone had the right to complain about his circumstances, it was Frankl. Here's a great passage about attitude:

We who lived in concentration camps can remember the men who walked through the huts comforting others, giving away their last piece of bread. They may have been few in number, but they offer sufficient proof that everything can be taken from a man but one thing: the last of the human freedoms — to choose one's attitude in any given set of circumstances, to choose one's own way. And there were always choices to make. Every day, every hour, offered the opportunity to make a decision, a decision which determined whether you would or would not submit to those powers which threatened to rob you of your very self, your inner freedom; which determined whether or not you would become the plaything of circumstance, renouncing freedom and dignity to become molded into the form of the typical inmate. Seen from this point of view, the mental reactions of the inmates of a concentration camp must seem more to us than the mere expression of certain physical and sociological conditions. Even though conditions such as lack of sleep, insufficient food and various mental stresses may suggest that the inmates were bound to react in certain ways, in the final analysis it becomes clear that the sort of person the prisoner became was the result of an inner decision, and not the result of camp influences alone. Fundamentally, therefore, any man can, even under such circumstances, decide what shall become of him.