No one was sure what to do next. The umpire told her that if she did not make it around to all the bases she would only be credited with a single. If any of her teammates helped her she would be called out. Just then, Mallory Holtman, the all-time conference home run hitter from the opposing team, approached the home plate umpire. She asked, “Could we pick her up and carry her around?” He stared back at her with a look of disbelief on his face, then consulted with the other umpires, and said, “Yes.” Mallory and one of her teammates, Liz Wallace, approached Sara and asked her, “Would it be alright if we carried you around the bases?” Sara, somewhat overwhelmed, replied, “Yes! Thank you!” As they began to lift her up, Liz said, “You hit the ball over the fence and you deserve it.”
Using a two-person arm carry, they slowly moved around the bases, gently touching her foot to each bag. As Mallory looked up into the stands as they rounded third heading for home, she realized that the entire crowd was on their feet clapping. Instead of cheering or yelling, she saw tears streaming down their faces. Everyone watching was overwhelmed with emotion by the act of love they had just witnessed. Tears of joy and gratitude were in Sara’s eye too. With her last time at bat, she had finally realized her life-long dream of hitting a home run.
What makes this even more memorable is the fact that these two teams were tied for the conference lead and were both desperate to win the championship title. Mallory and Liz may have helped Sara’s team to win the game that day but their act of selflessness won the hearts of everyone who witnessed it.
TAKE AWAY
The joy of playing does not need to be sacrificed in the name of competition. On the contrary, the joy of playing includes winning and performing at your highest possible level. Sport asks for all of your mind, body and spirit to win the game. It also demands that it be done with virtue. Accepting anything less transforms play into a selfish work. It is no longer done for the higher purpose, for the contemplation of the highest things for its own sake, but rather for the base and fleeting ends of money, power and fame.
No matter how “big” sport may become, it is still play. Whether it’s riding a bike for the first time, winning an Olympic gold medal, or becoming the next Superbowl MVP, sport is about the joy of competing and performing at your best. It challenges you and those you compete against to reach higher, to double your talents, to give back all that you have to give. And if it is motivated by virtue rather than an inordinate drive for money, power, or fame, then you will have in no small way moved one step closer to making peak performance a common occurrence in your life.
In the next four chapters we’ll take a look at the things that can get in the way of play motivated by virtue and joy. We’ll look at how they prevent peak performance. And we’ll look at how you can overcome them.
CHAPTER 2
RUNNING ON EMPTY
YOU seem to have everything you could want but you’re not really happy. Maybe you thought money, power, fame—winning—would make you happy. Why is winning so often anticlimactic? Why does the win fade so quickly and leave you feeling like you lost (or didn’t win enough)? Why is it that some athletes can’t walk away from the game? Why did Brett Favre, Sugar Ray Leonard, Roger Clemens, Manny Ramirez, and many other famous athletes desperately try to return after their first final goodbye? They’re desperate for the approval or the love of others. Their reserves have run out and their tanks are empty. They need a refill.
Take school for example. Let’s say that the first time you come home from school with a report card you have all D’s. Mom and dad look at it with real concern. Their vigilance increases and they check to make sure you’re studying, and you are. You’re working hard. They get you tutors, teach you study skills, the whole nine yards. You come home with your next report card and you still have all D’s. Okay, this isn’t good. They can see that you’re working diligently, and they’re doing everything that they can to help you. All of you redouble your efforts. Basically all they can say if you come home with more D’s is, “Good job, keep working, keep trying.”
On the other hand, imagine that you first come home with a report card with all A’s. Everyone’s excited. Mom and dad continue to sing your praises and think, “My kid, the genius!” You start seeing the bumper stickers on the back of the van, “My Child Is An Honors Student.” You get a huge clap on the back. This is great. But let’s say at some point you come home with a C on your report card. You think that’s going to go by unnoticed? No way. You’re going to have to give an explanation. Something has changed. You realize that A’s have become expected.
At this point you no longer get the same clap on the back for your good grades that you got the first time. This is not good, especially if you’re doing it to get the clap on the back! But you’re very adaptable. You become a juggler. You’ve got to try to maintain your A’s, which by the way is taking a lot of effort. However, even the A’s aren’t earning you that clap on the back anymore, so with your left hand, you juggle the school stuff. You just keep that going. But you discover that you have a free hand! You’re going to take on something new to get a much needed clap on the back: maybe it’s athletics. Just like when you first started school, no one knows how you’re going to perform. It turns out you’ve got talent. People are impressed. “You’re fast! She’s so strong. Look at his technique!” It’s a big clap on the back, and it feels great. “Okay,” you say, “I can do this.” Now your juggling consists of keeping academics and athletics up in the air.
Soon, however, your high athletic performance also becomes expected. You don’t get as big a clap on the back for a great play, because you’re supposed to be that good. As a matter of fact, if you don’t continually set personal bests people begin to wonder what’s wrong with you. You’re now expected to be a talented athlete. When this happens, you find another activity to add to your juggling act, looking for that clap on the back again. However, you only have one-hundred percent to give. Sometimes you will hear a coach say, “I wanna see you give me a hundred and ten percent!” or you might say, “I gave it a hundred and ten percent.” No, you didn’t. There’s no secret slice under the pie. You only have a hundred. At some point, you’ve taken on so many things in order to get a clap on the back that all one hundred percent of your effort is tied up in juggling the things that have become expected, that you have to maintain. When you get to this point you begin to get a very strong feeling and usually it’s a bad one. It might be anger, sadness, frustration, or depression—whatever it is, you’re probably not going to like it.
What’s happened is that being “good enough” has become tied to being loved. It may sound like a reach, but that’s what it is. You’re never going to say, “I’m doing this for love,” but essentially that’s just it. It’s why we want the clap on the back, it’s that love thing, and it’s why we get upset when we don’t have it.
This is something to be aware of in anything that you do. Are you doing it to show that you’re “good enough?” Are you doing it for the love or approval of others? These, by the way, have nothing to do with each other. People who love you will continue to love you regardless of your performance. And what about those who don’t seem to love you anymore when your performance suffers? Well, they never loved you from the start.
“Being good enough” is a powerful force that is always at work whether you are conscious of it or not. It is not a question of, “is it there,” but rather to what degree does it affect your life, relationships, and the things that you do. What if I told you that the room you are sitting in no longer has any oxygen in it. You have to quickly find a way out. Otherwise you are going to die. You would do whatever it takes to get out; break a window, smash a wall, or scream for help. Now, what if I told you that instead of no oxygen in the room, there is no approval or love in the room? Well you may not like it but you’re not going to die. When we make the mistake of equating the clap on the back with love, we make love like the oxygen. We absolutely have to have it or we feel like we a
re going to die. Every molecule of love becomes like the oxygen we need to live.
Think about what you are currently doing in order to be “good enough.” What’s really insidious about this is that often you will desperately try to get the love you crave from someone who can’t give it to you. You’re killing yourself to get it from a person who actually wasn’t even capable of giving it to you in the first place. Why do you keep trying so hard? The reason you will not give up is because it feels like, “I need every drop of love I can get, I can’t afford to lose one drop of it”. Understanding to what degree this drive is present in your life and how to control it will free you up to perform better, enjoy what you are doing, and find the genuine love that may be eluding you now.
Sometimes the clap on the back can take other forms. Instead of performing to get it, many people will try to buy it. I have known and worked with many individuals who have made millions of dollars. On the face of it, this is not a problem. As a matter of fact it would seem like a very good thing. But only if you don’t need it!
One major league baseball player I know was making about a million dollars a year. Due to a tax related issue, his income for the year was lower than usual and he would only be paid eight-hundred thousand dollars. I remember speaking with him at the time and he said to me, “I don’t know what I am going to do this year. I am really strapped for cash.” He was serious! Eight-hundred-thousand dollars! He sincerely felt that he would face hardships in the year to come because he would have to make do with a little more than three quarters of a million dollars. Now, I don’t know about you, but when I hear eight-hundred thousand dollars I think, “Wow! How could he possibly think he would struggle or even have a difficult time with that kind of income?”
Before you judge him too harshly, think about your own life. Have you ever noticed a tendency to live up to your means? Whether its $35,000, $50,000, $100,000, or more than a million, we all tend to live on the edge of our incomes. It’s easy to look at this player and rationalize how he has a problem while we fail to see that we may be doing the same thing. The question you should be asking yourself is, “What am I buying and why am I buying it?” Your immediate response may be, “I needed it.” But is that true? How often do you buy things that you really don’t need? Probably more than you might like to admit. On occasion you may have found yourself buying things that you didn’t even like too much. If so, you are not alone.
A very successful NFL player I worked with made millions of dollars, owned three Mercedes, two palatial homes, and could buy just about anything he wanted. When I first started working with him, I noticed that he would go out almost every day to the mall and buy a shirt. Yes, a shirt. Even though he was a Super Bowl champion, his tank was nearly empty. He was forever restless, distracted, and in need of a “fix.” He used buying things as a temporary distraction and substitute to fill himself up until he could get his next big clap on the back. As you might imagine, it didn’t work.
After bringing it to his attention and having many discussions about it, he was able to wean himself off buying things that he really did not need or want, and he began to focus on the things that could really fill him up. Once he started playing for the right reasons, he began to have fun again. He was shocked to find that he was also playing at a level that made his Super Bowl performances seem anemic. Playing like he was twelve again, for the sheer joy of it, began to fill his once perpetually empty tank.
Another reason the clap on the back can dominate your life is because your home, work, and social worlds tend to reinforce your need for it every day. One NFL player who I had worked with for many years fortunately came to this realization early in his career. He quickly learned that the NFL is about winning. It’s a business and he would be “valued,” not loved, by how well he performed. He would receive very little help from anyone and he would have to figure out how to survive and fit in quickly or he would be gone. They demanded that he meet their expectations, no excuses.
You may think that an NFL player, especially a young one, is continually being taught and coached. This is rare. There is a mentality that pervades which says, “You are the pro. We pay you a lot of money to perform. Go perform or get off the field.” And if he isn’t good enough there is a guy standing right behind him just dying for the opportunity to take his place. Of course there are exceptions but they are only temporary. You may see a first round draft pick who is a complete bust but the team seems to stick with him. That’s because the person who drafted him does not want to admit they made a ten or twenty million dollar mistake. It’s now a waiting game until his contract is up or they trade him to another team who hasn’t fully realized the problem they would be inheriting.
For an example, look no further than the first round pick of the 2007 NFL draft, JaMarcus Russell. Guaranteed twenty-five million dollars, he was cut by the Oakland Raiders after only three years. Among the myriad of problems he faced, both from those around him as well as from himself, it is interesting to note the reason for his quick demise. He said, “I just got to where the game wasn’t fun for me.” He just couldn’t figure out why his tank was empty. He didn’t fully understand that the NFL is a business. It has nothing to do with fun or with him as a person. He is like any gladiator who entertains the crowd in violent contests with other gladiators, wild animals and condemned criminals. He will only survive for as long as he wins.
Those who do survive are usually busy filling their tanks. For many professional athletes the clap on the back comes in the form of big paychecks, public adulation, and the few seconds of fame captured on an ESPN highlight. College players transitioning to the pros struggle with this because their ready source of claps on the back expired upon leaving the stardom of their college teams. They were better than most of their college competition and mistakenly think life will be the same at the next level. 99.9% of the time they are wrong. They will now be playing exclusively with pro stars who, as veterans, are much faster, stronger, more skilled, mature, and fully adapted to the pro game.
To make matters worse, if new players have difficulty adjusting initially, even in small ways like an occasional dropped ball or missed assignment, they will be quickly labeled as not ready, or worse, a draft bust. And because they are rookies they will make mistakes. They will also find that no matter how desperate they may be for a clap on the back, few will be in the offing.
If this wasn’t bad enough, they soon find that an error is not only a loss of the clap on the back, it is just the opposite of a clap on the back, and usually involves a public humiliation and tongue lashing by coaches or teammates. Each successive error is magnified and contributes to the next one, resulting in a downward spiral that seems to swallow the young player whole. Very soon the critical eyes that are ever present, constantly questioning a player’s readiness or ability to play at the pro level, come to the conclusion, “No.”
Since players are quickly assessed and labeled in the pros, their ability to let go of unnecessary baggage, including the need for claps on the back, is vital to their success. Jettisoning the old stuff makes room for learning the new things they will need in order to survive and thrive in the pros.
One wide receiver I worked with did this extraordinarily well. As a college star in one of the top football conferences in the country he was used to starting and playing the entire game. As an NFL rookie wide receiver, he would now need to come off the bench and step into a dramatically faster game with no opportunity to warm up. In his first game, I suggested that anytime the offense was on the field that he stand as close to the side-line as he was permitted. He should imagine that he was on the field playing, reading the defenses, watching how they move, feeling the intensity and speed of the game. He worked to generate the same energy as he would have had if he were standing on the line of scrimmage about to run a route. When the ball was thrown, he would see every detail of it from the time it left the QB’s hand until it reached the hands of the receiver. By doing this on every offensive pla
y, he felt like he had been actually on the field, playing in the game.
Eventually the moment arrived, late in the second quarter of his first professional game, on a third down play, his number was called. Because he didn’t need the clap on the back, he wasn’t worried about failing or dropping a pass. He was able to step onto the field, in the middle of a game, and make an exceptional catch and run for a first down. Those critical eyes that are always looking and judging, saw this and said, “Oh yeah! He was a steal in the second round. We’ve gotta get him some more balls.” Within a couple of games he was not only catching more passes, he had earned a starting position. He then went on to have a long and outstanding career. For him, being good enough and being loved had nothing to do with each other. He just enjoyed playing the game.
Your need for a clap on the back can often be hidden or disguised. For example, does it bother you when someone tells you your work is not good enough? Does it make you angry or defensive when someone criticizes your performance or informs you that you are not the right person for the job? You might be thinking, “What if they are wrong? Don’t I have the right to be angry at someone who has unfairly judged me?” Okay let’s say they are wrong, why all the emotion? On the other hand, what if they are right? Does it seem to especially hurt you when it comes from those you love and respect the most? If the answer is yes, then you might want to consider why it bothers you so much. After all, if their criticism is basically correct, what makes it so unpleasant to hear? The answer is fairly simple. The intensity of the hurt or anger you experience when told that you do not measure up in some way will be proportional to the intensity of your need for each drop of love.
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