This immediately took me back to Coach Don Meyer's Academy in which he would always (and I mean always) recommend to everyone to buy a copy of Frosty Westerling's book, "Make The Big Time Where You Are." As someone who had numerous opportunities to move on to "bigger" things but chose to make his mark at special places, you had to listen when he would say "It doesn't matter where you coach, it matters why you coach."
The other part of the equation that Brian Tracy talks about that is critical is the importance of choosing the right career. Far too many pick the life of being a coach because they like sports. Wrong reason. If you want to be successful in coaching -- and enjoy the process even through the adversity, then you better understand that it's about relationships.
I've probably mentioned it before, but as a freshman at Marshall University, I took a basketball coaching class from the head men's coach, the late Stu Aberdeen. For an entire semester he never drew a play, never talked about an offense, never explained a defense. But he constantly spoke about the role of a coach in the life of a young person and how a coach and their team can make a difference in the community. He was passionate about that and it impacted me and helped me to make a decision to become a coach.
When I got married at the age of 31, one of the people standing beside me at the wedding was my junior high coach Allen Osborne. It wasn't because he helped me with my jump shot or taught me how to defend (I'll get a wise comment from him on that one) -- it was because he helped me to grow as a person -- and has never stopped helping me.
Here is Brian's recent post titled, "Moving Upward and Onward"
Don't Sell Yourself Short
It's not what you have but what you do with what you have that will determine your success or failure. Abraham Maslow, the great psychologist said that the story of the human race is the story of people selling themselves short. He said people have a tendency to settle for far less from life than they are truly capable of. Many people are spinning their wheels in careers where they should be moving rapidly onward and upward.
Here's how you can put your career on the fast track.
Choose Your Parents Carefully
Someone once said that the key to success was to choose your parents carefully. That may be partially true but it is even more important to choose your job or career with great care. The choice of a job or occupation for which you are ideally suited comes before anything else. If you try to work at something you don't enjoy or don't believe in, you'll never be happy, and you'll never be successful.
Be the Best At What You Do
Which leads us to the next point. If you want to reach the stars in your career, you have to become excellent at what you do. You have to pay any price, go any distance, spend any amount of time necessary to "be the best." Extraordinary rewards only go for extraordinary performance; average rewards for average performance; below average rewards, insecurity and failure for below average performance. And here's a vital key, you are being paid today exactly what you're worth - no more, no less. If you want to earn more, you must increase your worth, your value to others.
The Key to Motivation
The reason why choosing the right career, why doing what you love to do is so important, is because unless you really care about your work, you will never be motivated to persist at it until you become excellent. And until you become excellent at what you're doing, you can't move ahead.
The Key to Peak Performance
The antidote to these fears is the development of courage, character and self-esteem. The opposite of fear is actually love, self-love and self-respect. Acting with courage in a fearful situation is simply a technique that boosts our regard for ourselves to such a degree that our fears subside and lose their ability to effect our behavior and our decisions.
Action Exercises
Here are two things you can do to be more successful in your career.
First, set high standards for yourself and recognize that anything that someone else has achieved, you can probably achieve as well. There are no limits.
Second, select one key skill area that is important in your job and resolve to become absolutely excellent in that area. Start today to get better and better.
Be sure to check out: www.BrianTracy.com
