Life Lessons

Success recipes most people know, but too few follow

If you want to look back on a life that fills you with joy, conventional rules for success are not the place to start

Don’t chase money, power, or status.

If they come to you, that’s fine. But most conventional ideas about success go wrong because they focus on outcomes instead of on the processes of living. Outcomes come around from time to time, but life itself—the process of living, acting, thinking, and being—happens all the time. No outcome is going to make a lousy, miserable process feel worthwhile.

If you hate what you do, no amount of power or money will make up for that.
If your life is constantly stressful, boring, unhappy, or frustrating, how can achieving some high status once in a while make up for all the miserable days and weeks you spent getting there? It’s tempting to feel that the end will more than make up for the means; that you’ll forget the misery in the blaze of achievement. And you will—for a few moments. Then you’ll be back on the treadmill, with only the distant hope of some fresh achievement or monetary gain to console you. That’s like being a laboratory rat conditioned to unnatural behavior by occasional pellets of food.


Take whatever time you need to discover what matters to you most

Success isn’t simply a matter of money, power, or prestige. You could gain all of those and still feel that you have fallen short of what you wanted; or you could gain none of them and be blissfully happy and fulfilled. What constitutes personal success is mostly in your mind. It has much less to do with finding the best career in other peoples’ eyes, creating a killer business, or holding down a fancy job with a big salary than with achieving what really matters to you. Many people find this out too late. They struggle for years to get where other people said they should go, only to find it does little or nothing for them. Sad;y, it’s often too late by then to do anything else.

Don’t base your choices on others’ approval.

We all want to please those we care about, so it’s natural to try to do what they approve. Natural, but rarely a good idea as the basis for life’s choices. I don’t say that you should deliberately ignore sound advice, or reject a career path simply because other people suggest it. But even the most loving parent or friend can’t always see what is going to make your heart sing. Listen to others. Value their input and their support. But go your own way. It’s better to be committed to doing what you truly love than accept something lesser for the sake of being approved by someone else.

Stay authentic.

That means always doing what truly matters to you and is part of who you are. The simplest definition of a hypocrite is someone who says one thing and does another: like a person who says that he or she wants to work at something that benefits society, then forgets that at the first sight of a fistful of dollar bills. Somewhere inside of you is a part that recalls what truly matters and will never quite let you forget it. Over the years, that inner voice is only going to get louder.

Go for meaning over money every time.

It’s perfectly possible to do something meaningless to you and earn a great deal of cash while doing so. Some people do, especially in parts of the media world. It just requires a stronger stomach and more cynicism that most people possess, plus a huge tolerance for boredom.

Is it worth it?

If money is truly all that matters to you—and you can make lots of it quickly and get out—it might be. Few areas of work will allow you to do that, aside from criminal ones. Meaningless days corrode most peoples’ minds and destroy their happiness. Doing something that means a great deal to you almost always makes you feel energized and alive. It’s your choice.

Be endlessly greedy—for learning.

You can never learn too much or overfill your mind with new ideas. Nothing is more useful in life than a well-developed, well-stocked mind, especially one that has been broadened and enlarged in the process. It’s hard to name a single famously successful person who was narrow-minded, bigoted, or stupid. The list of notable successes who are recognized for the power of their minds is long. And you don’t have to have had an expensive education to be able to develop a great mind. There have been plenty of near geniuses whose education was almost entirely self-produced.

Make a friend of failure.

You are certain to fail sometimes, and the higher your aspirations, the more frequent and significant that failure will be. People who don’t strive for anything glorious rarely fail; they take no risks and never aim beyond what is easily attainable. But if you treat failure as an enemy, it’s going to lead only to discouragement and even the abandoning of your hopes and dreams. Failure can be a friend, pointing out what isn’t right yet and showing you the way to do better. The more proficient you become at accepting the lessons of failure, the quicker you will succeed.

Make sure that every time you make a mistake, it’s a new one.

Making the same mistake several times shows that you haven’t learned what it can teach you. Making new mistakes proves that you’re trying something different. The best definition of a loser is someone who makes the same mistakes over and over again, never managing to learn anything in the process. Such a person is doomed.

Choose to spend your time with the right people.

I don’t mean that in the sense of the rich and the powerful, the movers and shakers of society. Whether they’re powerful or not, the best people to spend time with are those from whom you can learn most: the ones whose own lives have brought them joy and endless fulfillment. That means people who do what they love and love what they do. People who have become experts in life, thinking people, people with wide-open minds and wide-open hearts.

Seek them out wherever you can. Listen to them.

Never mind if they are no longer living. Read their books and emulate their largeness of spirit. Learn from them all, but don’t simply copy what they did in this world. What they did was right for them, but may not be right for you. What you need to use as models are their ways of thinking and responding to the challenges of the world; the process of their lives, not what it happened to contain.

Drop whatever is inconsistent with these principles.

That means all activities that don’t move you forward towards what you value most; things that get in the way of learning; pursuits that waste time and dull your senses; and people who hold you back. You may sometimes have to be ruthless. Each of us has only one life. If you waste it, you don’t get another chance. Besides, if you have chosen your dreams and aspirations wisely, what you must leave behind by dropping what’s inconsistent with those dreams will not be worth worrying about anyway. Those who make bad choices find, too late, that they have abandoned things and people that meant more to them than whatever they gained in exchange. If that happens, you have truly reached one of life’s lowest points.


Adrian Savage is a writer, an Englishman, and a retired business executive, in that order. He lives in Tucson, Arizona.

Efficiency Through Leverage

Andrew Taylor writes:

I have a definition for "Efficiency" which is similar to the formula used in Physics.

The definition is -- Getting the most done with the least amount of effort, even if this means something or someone else doing it for you.

The example I use to teach this definition is:

A Managing Director wishes to send out a personal end of year letter to all 500 company employees and sits down at a typewriter and types up all of the letters himself. It takes him 30 minutes per letter thus taking 250 hours at a value per hour of £35. Total cost £8750

The next year the Managing Director has employed a personal Assistant and they are given the task of typing up the letters. The personal assistant is a touch typist and spends just 3 minutes per letter thus taking 12.5 hours at a value per hour of £15. Total cost 187.5

The next year the Personal Assistant has the use of a computer and a laser printer. The personal assistant types up a mail merge letter in 3 minutes and spend 30 seconds entering the contact details into a spreadsheet for use with the mail merge and printing out the letter thus taking 4.2 hours at a value per hour of £15. Total cost 63.25.

We may wish to do the job ourselves but we should always ask if this is the best use our time and energy, or should we be asking others to who are better at the task than us and have the tools to do the task quicker than we can.

The old adage "Time is money" still holds true, even in cyberspace.

“Pain is inevitable. Suffering is optional.”

Intensity

There is an intensity inside you waiting to be harnessed

Relationships: Where Eagles Dare to Fly, Few Go...

Kenzie: You will find in life that when you're an eagle...the rewards are fantastic...the self-actualization is incomparable...and very often it's a lonely journey. Not forever, mind you -- just until you find a "space" in your life where there are others (even one or two?) who are like you. Who are also "eagles". Eagles don't flock. They fly alone in a universe where almost every other species' survival, much less entertainment, depends upon staying with "the group". You're an eagle, and that was apparent from the time you could talk.

Every single one of your teachers at St.John's told Dad and I what a leader you were -- how "special" an individual you were. We didn't ask -- they volunteered this information at parent-teachers' conferences over the years. The analysis of your abilities began at the "new school" -- the YMCA pre-school. It never stopped at St. John's. All of them were describing an eagle--a leader. That's what you are.

Think of it this way: right now in terms of your sporting career, you join teams where most, if not all, of the other girls are gold fish in the tank. They have bright colors, muted colors, some are beautiful, others are not. But they have one immutable trait in common: they're all gold fish in this tank.

One day another fish joins the tank. This fish is not a goldfish. This fish is a barracuda. Sleek, fast and bright as hell, and effective: terribly, terribly effective. And the barracuda likes the goldfish! She tries to play with them, joke with them, in effect, be like one of them! but that's impossible: she can never be a goldfish. Ever.

Now the goldfish are puzzled at firs by the presence of the barracuda, and not a little intimidated. They eye her warily, they tolerate her -- after all she is IN the tank, too. But they realize she is NOT a goldfish -- she is NOT one of them, no matter how hard she tries to be. And when the barracuda nudges the goldfish and tries to coach them into being faster, smarter, more effective...well they become annoyed. They know in their fish souls that they are NOT barracudas and will never be. And they don't understand why the barracuda just won't "let them be".

The nature of an eagle, a barracuda, a leader is to lead. By definition, that means pointing the "way" for others. As a leader, you must learn, and you will eventually, that your happiness and self-actualization will depend upon how closely you fulfill your destiny. And your destiny is to be an eagle/barracuda/goldfish.

There are other eagles and leaders out there...trust me. You won't be lonely on your journey forever. Just for a little while now even as you slog through your teen-age years. but the prize on the other side of personal integrity is awesome, and it's different for every individual. It's worth all of the effort, aggravation, pain, tears, fear and disdain.

Here's the key: remember who you are. Remember who you are. Never forget, not even for a moment, who you are. You've been given many gifts by God -- best get to figuring out how to employ them.

Dad and I love you and treasure you and will always be here for you.

Sports: Coaching

HIGHLIGHT: Stats are only the beginning...

MORAL: Does the girl have passion, hustle, talent and heart?

Stats are only one way an introduction can occur.

More than how high or how fast are questions like:
Does she play hard? All the time?
Does she play smart?
Does she make players around her better?
Does she make plays?
Does she love the game?




For Kenzie

Words To Live By: Hard Work Beats Talent When Talent Fails To Work Hard

HIGHLIGHT: Lots of great quotes.

MORAL: "The harder I practice, the luckier I get."

"A lot of us would like to move mountains, but few of us are willing to practice on small hills."

"Although we cannot do everything at once, we can do something at once."

"Always do your best. What you plant now, you will harvest later." -- Og Mandino

"Anyone can do any amount of work provided it isn't the work he is supposed to be doing at that moment." -- Robert Benchley

"Anything in life worth having is worth working for." -- Andrew Carnegie

"Before I get in the ring, I'd have already won or lost it out on the road. The real part is won or lost somewhere far away from witnesses - behind the lines, in the gym and out there on the road before I dance under those lights." -- Muhammad Ali

"Between saying and doing, many a pair of shoes is worn out." -- Italian Proverb

"Blaze with the fire that is never extinguished." -- Luisa Sigea

"Build up your weaknesses until they become your strong points." -- Knute Rockne

"By failing to prepare, you prepare to fail."

"By perseverance, the snail reached the ark." -- Charles Spurgeon

"Champions aren't made in gyms. Champions are made from something they have deep inside them - a desire, a dream, a vision. They have to have last-minute stamina, they have to be a little faster, they have to have the skill and the will. But the will must be stronger than the skill." -- Muhammad Ali

"Chop your own wood and it will warm you twice." -- Henry Ford

"Consider the postage stamp; it's usefulness consists in the ability to stick to one thing till it gets there." -- Josh Billings

"Decide what you want, decide what you are willing to exchange for it. Establish your priorities and go to work." -- H.L. Hunt

"Diamonds are just little chunks of coal that stuck to their job." -- 'The Old Farmer's Almanac'.

"Do or do not. There is no try." -- Yoda

"Dwell not upon thy weariness, thy strength shall be according to the measure of thy desire." -- Arab Proverb

"Every man's work, whether it be literature or music or pictures or architecture or anything else, is always a portrait of himself." -- Samuel Butler

"Everything comes to him who hustles while he waits."

"Faith makes things possible, not easy."

"For anything worth having one must pay the price; and the price is always work, patience, love, self-sacrifice. No paper currency, no promises to pay, but the gold of real service." -- John Burroughs

"Forget yourself and start to work." -- Gordon B. Hinckley

"Genius is one percent inspiration and ninety-nine percent perspiration." -- Thomas Edison

"Hard work beats talent when talent fails to work hard."

"Hard work can be fun."

"Having once decided to achieve a certain task, achieve it at all costs of tedium and distaste. The gain in self confidence of having accomplished a tiresome labor is immense." -- Thomas Bennett

"He who stops being better stops being good." -- Oliver Cromwell

"I'm a great believer in luck, and I find the harder I work, the more I have of it." -- Thomas Jefferson

"I always remember an epitaph which is in the cemetery at Tombstone, Arizona. It says: 'Here lies Jack Williams. He done his damnedest.' I think that is the greatest epitaph a man can have - When he gives everything that is in him to do the job he has before him. That is all you can ask of him and that is what I have tried to do." -- Harry S Truman

"I have nothing to offer but toil, sweat, tears, and blood." -- Winston Churchill

"I learned that the only way you are going to get anywhere in life is to work hard at it. Whether you're a musician, a writer, an athlete or a businessman, there is no getting around it. If you do, you'll win -- if you don't you won't." -- Bruce Jenner

"I like a person who knows his own mind and sticks to it; who sees at once what, in given circumstances, is to be done, and does it." -- William Hazlitt

"I like work; it fascinates me. I can sit and look at it for hours." -- Jerome K. Jerome

"I long to accomplish a great and noble task, but it is my chief duty to accomplish small tasks as if they were great and noble." -- Helen Keller

"I never did anything worth doing by accident, nor did any of my inventions come by accident; they came by work." -- Thomas Edison

"I played as hard as I could...That's all I want to be remembered for." -- Larry Bird

"I will get ready and then, perhaps, my chance will come."

"I will prepare, and someday my chance will come." -- Abraham Lincoln

"Idleness is an inlet to disorder, and makes way for licentiousness. People who have nothing to do are quickly tired of their own company." -- Jeremy Collier

"If I do not practice one day, I know it. If I do not practice the next, the orchestra knows it. If I do not practice the third day, the whole world knows it." -- Ignace Paderewski

"If people knew how hard I have had to work to gain my mastery, it wouldn't seem wonderful at all." -- Michelangelo

"If you put in the work, the results will come."

"If you wear out the seat of your pants before your shoes, perhaps you are working the wrong end."

"It's a little like wrestling a gorilla. You don't quit when you're tired -- you quit when the gorilla is tired."

"It's not how many hours you put in but how much you put into the hours."

"It's not so much how busy you are, but why you are busy. The bee is praised, the mosquito is swatted." -- Catherine O'Hara

"It's not that I'm so smart; it's just that I stay with problems longer." -- Albert Einstein

"It's one thing to say you're going to do it. It's another thing to go out and do it."

"It's supposed to be hard. If it wasn't, everyone could do it. It's the hard that makes it great." -- "A League of Their Own"

"It is better to wear out than to rust out." -- Bishop Richard Cumberland

"It is counter-productive to put your best foot forward while dragging the other."

"It takes no talent to hustle." -- Hans Schmidt

"Know what you want to do, hold the thought firmly, and do every day what should be done, and every sunset will see you that much nearer the goal." -- Elbert Hubbard

"Knowing is not enough; we must apply. Willing is not enough; we must do." -- Goethe

"Lack of confidence is born from a lack of preparation." -- Shannon Wilburn

"Let him that would move the world, first move himself." -- Socrates

"Look at a day when you are supremely satisfied at the end. It's not a day when you lounge around doing nothing; it's when you've had everything to do, and you've done it." -- Margaret Thatcher

"Look at a stonecutter hammering away at his rock, perhaps a hundred times without as much as a crack showing in it. Yet at the hundred and first blow it will split in two, and I know it was not the last blow that did it, but all that had gone before." -- Jacob A. Riis

"Lord, give me the determination and tenacity of a weed."

"Measure not the work until the day's out and the labor done." -- Elizabeth Barrett Browning

"Millions of words are written annually purporting to tell how to beat the races, whereas the best possible advice on the subject is found in the three monosyllables: 'Do not try.'" -- Dan Parker

"Motivation is when your dreams put on work clothes."

"Never be satisfied or content. Always want more and you'll compete more."

"No man is ever whipped until he quits - in his own mind." -- Napoleon Hill

"Nobody is ever met at the airport when beginning a new adventure. It's just not done." -- Elizabeth Warnock Fernea

"Nothing ever comes to one that is worth having except as a result of hard work." -- Booker T. Washington

"Nothing will work unless you do." -- John Wooden

"Opportunity is missed by most people because it is dressed in overalls and looks like work." -- Thomas Edison

"Our days are identical suitcases -- all the same size -- but some people can pack more into them than others."

"People forget how fast you did a job - but they remember how well you did it." -- Howard Newton

"Plans are only good intentions unless they immediately degenerate into hard work." -- Peter Drucker

"Practice without improvement is meaningless." -- Chuck Knox

"Push yourself again and again...don't give an inch until the final buzzer sounds." -- Larry Bird

"Quit the CRYING and WHINING, and start the GRITTIN' and GRINDING!"

"Satisfaction lies in the effort, not in the attainment, full effort is full victory." -- Mahatma Gandhi

"Some dream of worthy accomplishments, while others stay awake and do them."

"Sometimes our best is simply not enough. We have to do what is required." -- Sir Winston Churchill

"Strivers achieve what dreamers believe." -- Usher

"Talk about what one is going to do means little; doing it means all."

"Temporary Inconvenience -- Permanent Improvement." -- sign at road construction site

"That which we persist in doing becomes easier, not that the task itself has become easier, but that our ability to perform it has improved." -- Ralph Waldo Emerson

"The amount of confidence you have is directly proportional to how hard you work."

"The choicest laurel wreaths are the hardest won."

"The harder I practice, the luckier I get." -- Gary Player

"The man on top of the mountain did not fall there."

"The man who moved a mountain was the one who began carrying away small stones." -- Chinese Proverb

"The mark of a Champion, in any endeavor, is their pride in preparing for their competition. For the businessman, as well as the athlete, it's reading the right books, listening to the right tapes/CDs, attending the right seminars and choosing the right mentors and coaches. Champions are built, not born. There is no off season for someone on the road to being a champion. There is only preparation and competition." -- Greg Werner

"The only place where success comes before work is in the dictionary." -- Vidal Sassoon

"The only thing in life achieved without effort is failure."

"The reason why worry kills more people than work is that more people worry than work." -- Robert Frost

"The secret is this: strength lies solely in tenacity." -- Louis Pasteur

"The starting point of all achievement is desire. Weak desire brings weak results." -- Napoleon Hill

"The three great essentials to achieving anything worthwhile are; first, hard work, second, stick-to-it-iveness, and third, common sense." -- Thomas Edison

"The way to get to the top is to get off your bottom."

"The will to win means nothing without the will to prepare."

"The world is full of willing people, some willing to work, the others willing to let them." -- Robert Frost

"There's no scarcity of opportunity to make a living at what you love. There is only a scarcity of resolve to make it happen." -- Wayne Dyer

"There are two kinds of people, those who do the work and those who take the credit. Try to be in the first group; there is less competition there." -- Indira Gandhi

"There is one thing I can control. I will never be outworked."

"Those at the top of the mountain didn't fall there." -- Marcus Washling

"Those who work the hardest are the last to surrender."

"To do nothing is the way to be nothing." -- Nathaniel Howe

"Understand the difference between being at work and working."

"Unless you are willing to drench yourself in your work beyond the capacity of the average man, you are just not cut out for positions at the top." -- J.C. Penney

"Use it up, wear it out, make it do, or do without."

"We are not permitted to choose the frame of our destiny, but what we put into it is ours." -- Dag Hammarskiold

"We are told that talent creates its own opportunities. But it sometimes seems that intense desire creates not only its own opportunities, but its own talents." -- Eric Hoffer

"Well begun is half done." -- Aristotle

"What keeps so many people back is simply unwillingness to pay the price, to make the exertion, the effort to sacrifice their ease and comfort." -- Orison Swett Marden

"What we hope to do with ease, we must learn first to do with diligence." -- Samuel Johnson

"Whatever your life's work is, do it well. A man should do his job so well that the living, the dead, and the unborn could do it no better." -- Martin Luther King Jr.

"When there's a piano to be moved, don't reach for the stool."

"When we accept tough jobs as a challenge to our ability and wade into them with joy and enthusiasm, miracles can happen." -- Arland Gilbert

"When you're not practicing, remember, someone, somewhere, is practicing, and when you meet him, he will win." -- Ed Macauley

"When you're through improving, you're through."

"Whenever I think I can't do something, I'm usually right. Whenever I think I can do something, I'm usually right again. Whenever I put 50 percent effort into a task, I'm usually 50 percent satisfied with the results." -- David Rich

"Work hard to make things easier." -- Pete Carill

"Work harder than the opposition."

"Work while you have the light. You are responsible for the talent that has been entrusted to you." -- Henri F. Amiel

"You may have good luck or you may have bad luck: but remember, you make your own luck."

"You must have confidence in your ability to perform the act required. This comes from practice." -- Tony Alfonso

“The vision of a champion is someone who is bent over, drenched in sweat, at the point of exhaustion when no one else is watching” -- Anson Dorrance

for Kenzie

Sports: Great Football Players: Bo Jackson - LaDainian Tomlinson

HIGHLIGHT: Bo Jackson - LaDainian Tomlinson

MORAL: By listening to great athletes, you can learn about greatness.

How LT LaDainian Tomlinson Trains





LaDainian Tomlinson, LT, Humble Post-game speech




Tips from LaDainian Tomlinson



Bo Jackson Highlights



Bo Jackson Nike Commercial


For Kenzie

Sports: Practice Doesn't Make Perfect - Perfect Practice Makes Perfect - Jim Edmonds

HIGHLIGHT: Nobody but you really knows how hard you work in practice.

MORAL: Practice Doesn't Make Perfect - Perfect Practice Makes Perfect


A ball was hit to over the head of baseball center fielder Jim Edmonds, surely destined to be a home run. Edmonds put his head down and sprinted for the outfield wall. As he neared the wall, rather than stopping to watch the ball become a home run, he ran faster and climbed the wall, making the catch, with his glove over the top of the fence. A great catch.

Afterwards, a reporter asked a team mate if that was the greatest catch he ever saw Edmonds make. The player responded, "No, I have seen that play hundreds of times. Before games Edmonds has a ball boy throw the ball to the top of the wall and Edmonds practices running up the wall to catch it."







For Kenzie

Words To Live By: John Wooden

HIGHLIGHT: Ability may get you to the top, but it takes character to keep you there.

Be more concerned with your character than your reputation, because your character is what you really are, while your reputation is merely what others think you are.

It isn't what you do, but how you do it.

Never mistake activity for achievement.

Sports do not build character. They reveal it.

Talent is God given. Be humble. Fame is man-given. Be grateful. Conceit is self-given. Be careful.

MORAL: Read books by people who are great teachers.


A coach is someone who can give correction without causing resentment.

Ability is a poor man's wealth.

Ability may get you to the top, but it takes character to keep you there.

Adversity is the state in which man mostly easily becomes acquainted with himself, being especially free of admirers then.

Although I wanted my players to work to win, I tried to convince them they had always won when they had done their best.

Be more concerned with your character than your reputation, because your character is what you really are, while your reputation is merely what others think you are.

Be prepared and be honest.

Consider the rights of others before your own feelings, and the feelings of others before your own rights.

Do not let what you cannot do interfere with what you can do.

Don't measure yourself by what you have accomplished, but by what you should have accomplished with your ability.

Failure is not fatal, but failure to change might be.

For an athlete to function properly, he must be intent. There has to be a definite purpose and goal if you are to progress. If you are not intent about what you are doing, you aren't able to resist the temptation to do something else that might be more fun at the moment.

I'd rather have a lot of talent and a little experience than a lot of experience and a little talent.

I always tried to make clear that basketball is not the ultimate. It is of small importance in comparison to the total life we live. There is only one kind of life that truly wins, and that is the one that places faith in the hands of the Savior. Until that is done, we are on an aimless course that runs in circles and goes nowhere.

If you're not making mistakes, then you're not doing anything. I'm positive that a doer makes mistakes.

If you don't have time to do it right, when will you have time to do it over?

It's not so important who starts the game but who finishes it.

It's the little details that are vital. Little things make big things happen.

It is what we learn after we know it all that really counts.

It isn't what you do, but how you do it.

Material possessions, winning scores, and great reputations are meaningless in the eyes of the Lord, because He knows what we really are and that is all that matters.

Never mistake activity for achievement.

Our land is everything to us... I will tell you one of the things we remember on our land. We remember that our grandfathers paid for it - with their lives.

Sports do not build character. They reveal it.

Success comes from knowing that you did your best to become the best that you are capable of becoming.

Success is never final, failure is never fatal. It's courage that counts.

Success is peace of mind which is a direct result of self-satisfaction in knowing you did your best to become the best you are capable of becoming.

Talent is God given. Be humble. Fame is man-given. Be grateful. Conceit is self-given. Be careful.

The main ingredient of stardom is the rest of the team.

The worst thing about new books is that they keep us from reading the old ones.

There are many things that are essential to arriving at true peace of mind, and one of the most important is faith, which cannot be acquired without prayer.

Things turn out best for the people who make the best of the way things turn out.

What you are as a person is far more important that what you are as a basketball player.

Winning takes talent, to repeat takes character.

You can't let praise or criticism get to you. It's a weakness to get caught up in either one.

You can't live a perfect day without doing something for someone who will never be able to repay you.

You cannot attain and maintain physical condition unless you are morally and mentally conditioned. And it is impossible to be in moral condition unless you are spiritually conditioned. I always told my players that our team condition depended on two factors / how hard they worked on the floor during practice and how well they behaved between practices.

Young people need models, not critics.

For Kenzie.