Issue 727 - Self-Discipline: The First Requirement of Greatness (Nick Saban and John Wooden)


Wooden's Wisdom - Volume 13	Issue 727
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SELF-DISCIPLINE: THE FIRST REQUIREMENT OF GREATNESS (NICK SABAN AND JOHN WOODEN) John Wooden Video Clip (92 sec.): Coach Wooden is asked: "What is the significance of doing your personal best?" The greatest college basketball coach ever, John Wooden, and the greatest college football coach ever, Nick Saban, have much in common. One quality that was at the top of both of their lists was Self-Discipline." On his Pyramid of Success Coach Wooden opened his definition of Self-Control with a requirement: "Practice self-discipline." Coach Saban emphasized this with many of his favorite quotes: "Everything starts with discipline." "Discipline is doing what needs to be done, even when you don’t feel like it." "Run hard when it gets hard to run." "Practice until you can’t get it wrong—not just until you get it right." Coach Saban summed up his thoughts this way. "The fact of the matter is, if you want to be good, you really don’t have a lot of choices. It takes what it takes. You don’t get to pick and choose when to work hard. If you want to be elite, you do what’s required, not just what feels good. You have to make the choices and decisions to have the discipline and the focus to the process of what you need to do to accomplish your goals. We have five choices in our life. We can be bad at what we do. We can be average. We can be good—which is probably God’s expectation for the ability He gave us. Or we can be excellent. Or we can be elite. If you’re going to be excellent or elite, you’ve got to do special things. You have to have special intensity. You have to have special focus. You have to have a special commitment and drive and passion to do things at a high level and a high standard all the time. Without the rest of it, I’m not sure you ever get excellent or elite." John Wooden was the greatest coach in the history of American sports because he had the self-discipline to come to practice with elite preparation, elite focus, elite attention to detail, and elite effort every day. That was daily standard with no exceptions. That is how he made the extraordinary ordinary. How is your self-discipline? What are your daily standards? Click here for personal development exercise: Issue 727. Click here for Printable Poetry: Issue 727. Yours in Coaching, Craig Impelman www.woodenswisdom.com Follow @woodenswisdom	COACH'S FAVORITE POETRY AND PROSE Yesterday I've trod the links with many a man, And played him club for club; 'Tis scarce a year since I began And I am still a dub. But this I've noticed as we strayed Along the bunkered way, No one with me has ever played As he did yesterday. It makes no difference what the drive, Together as we walk, Till we up to the ball arrive, I get the same old talk: "To-day there's something wrong with me, Just what I cannot say. Would you believe I got a three For this hole--yesterday?" I see them top and slice a shot, And fail to follow through, And with their brassies plough the lot, The very way I do. To six and seven their figures run, And then they sadly say: "I neither dubbed nor foozled one When I played--yesterday!" I have no yesterdays to count, No good work to recall; Each morning sees hope proudly mount, Each evening sees it fall. And in the locker room at night, When men discuss their play, I hear them and I wish I might Have seen them--yesterday. Oh, dear old yesterday! What store Of joys for men you hold! I'm sure there is no day that's more Remembered or extolled. I'm off my task myself a bit, My mind has run astray; I think, perhaps, I should have writ These verses--yesterday. Edgar Albert Guest (1881-1959)
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