Your GPS has no ego. That makes it the perfect student and teacher.
“And the impossible dream comes true!” With those words, broadcaster Al Michaels put an exclamation point on the U.S. Olympic hockey team’s gold medal. Now, 35 winters later, that gold medal reminds everyone that what seems to be impossible can actually happen. For the next 17 days, Dr. Rob Gilbert and I will be offering […]
Years ago, in my sports writing days, a softball coach told me something that changed my life. “If someone is lazy on the field, they’ll be lazy in the office, too,” he said. “If someone is a team player on the field, they’ll be a team player in the office as well.” Those words came […]
The other day I watched a school baseball team practice. With bat in hand, the coach worked with the outfielders, hitting fly balls for them to catch. This was a ritual that goes back well over a century. But something was missing: the effort to get better on every play. Every ball that came off […]
You may not know her by name, but you’ve likely seen actress Billie Burke in her most famous role. She played Glinda, the Good Witch from the North, in “The Wizard of Oz.” One day Burke was on an ocean liner making a trans-Atlantic crossing, and noticed that the gentleman at the next table was […]
Here’s a wonderful article about failure. There’s just one problem with it. Author Laura Vanderkam lists five reasons why you should fail more often. All those reasons could be boiled down to one, namely, without failure there is no progress. Babies are born with an ability to profit from failure. They try to walk, fall […]
If you want to be the best, you learn from the best. When it comes to college basketball, John Wooden was the best. That’s why two researchers — Ronald Gallimore and Roland Tharp — made a study of Wooden during practice. They paid particular attention to what Wooden, the longtime UCLA basketball coach, said and […]
Do you know a great spot where you can relax and have a cup of coffee? You need not be tempted to feel guilty about the hours you spend there. They’re not wasted. In fact, research shows that the opposite is true. According to an article in The Atlantic, crowded coffee shops actually fire up […]
No matter how long you’ve been coaching, you’re at a certain stage in your development. You’re either novice, intermediate or veteran. You’re variously fascinated with technique, or tactics, or motivation, or team-building, or practice planning, or something else. For the last several months, I’ve been drawn to the spiritual side of coaching. It began when […]
Today I heard a woman say with some pride that she “can do 12 things at once.” She also said, with not as much pride, that her daughter can only do one thing at a time. Only? By being able to do “only” one thing at a time, her daughter owns the key to success. […]