Wooden's Wisdom | Leadership Resource Center

Issue 689 - "Don’t Worry About Things Outside Of Your Control"


Wooden's Wisdom - Volume 13	Issue 688
Craig Impelman Speaking \| Championship Coaches \| Champion's Leadership Library Login
"DON’T WORRY ABOUT THINGS OUTSIDE OF YOUR CONTROL" John Wooden Video Clip (40 sec.): Coach Wooden is asked: "What are your thoughts on the phrase-Give 110 percent?" Coach Wooden’s Pyramid of Success is a consolidation of his thinking which provides us with a system to live a happy and productive life. The starting point of using this system is accepting Coach Wooden's definition of success: "Success is peace of mind, attained only through self-satisfaction in knowing you made the effort to do the best of which you’re capable." A person‘s ability to make use of this definition starts with one primary behavior: "Don’t worry about things outside of your control." All of us have a limited amount of energy (mental, physical, and spiritual) within ourselves that we can spend each day. Any energy we spend worrying about things outside of our control, (what other people think about us, what other people say about us, how other people talk to us, or what the outcome of our efforts will be with regards to a specific goal) will prevent us from doing our best on what we can control. The effort we spend worrying about the things outside of our control, could be spent on the things inside our control: (our effort, our kindness, our positive attitude, our attention to detail, our preparation, our ability to be self-critical and more). Coach Wooden suggested this approach on how to spend our energy: "Never try to be better than somebody else but never cease trying to be the best you can be. That’s under your control. The other isn’t and if you get too engrossed, involved and concerned in regard to the things that you have no control, it will have a negative effect on the things over which you have or should have control." "Don’t worry about things outside of your control." Can you do this? Will you teach this lesson to a young person? It could change their whole outlook on life. Click here for personal development exercise: Issue 689. Click here for Printable Poetry: Issue 689. Yours in Coaching, Craig Impelman www.woodenswisdom.com Follow @woodenswisdom	COACH'S FAVORITE POETRY AND PROSE For The Living If you like a person here, Tell them so; If you hold their friendship dear, Let them know; All the roses that you spread On their bier when they are dead Are not worth one kind word said Years ago. You can help a person now If you will Smooth the furrows from their brow; You can kill The despair that's in their heart With a word, and ease the smart. So why stand you now apart Keeping still? You can help a person when They are here; They would hold your praises then Very dear. But absurdly still you stay And withhold what you could say That would cheer them on their way For their bier. What, I wonder, if the dead Saw and heard What is done and what is said Afterward, Would they utter in reply? Would they smile and ask us why, When the time to help was nigh, No one stirred? 'Keep your roses for the living,' They would say, 'Waste no time in praises giving Us today; Strew some living person’s way so, If you like another, say so, For the thing that now you praise so Is but clay.' Edgar Albert Guest (1881-1959)
For more information visit www.woodenswisdom.com