Strategy #6 / Achievement - Attaining your goals; the only real measure of success.

We’re at the End of the Season Award Banquet and Coach Hall of the Tigers is handing the Sportsmanship Award trophy to Colby, a member of his team. Terry Simmons of our Falcons will be accepting the Most Valuable Player Award from Coach Ames. The Winning Team Award will be presented to the Wolverines at the end of the presentations.

Everyone on the team must believe that he is a Winner; including the bat-boy. If you make any of them losers, you diminish the whole operation.

Success is being where you are after you’ve done your very best.

Who you are and what you do are two different things. You can lose and not be a loser. You can be, act, and feel like a winner regardless of the circumstances. And when you do your very best, you are always a winner. And so it is with your team. The players, the parents, your assistant coaches and you, must all feel that you are winners.

There are Winners and there are Losers - An Exploration.

In the 2019 New York Marathon there were 53,508 entrants – 30,794 men and 22,714 women. The first man to reach the finish line was Geoffrey Kamworor of Kenya in 2:08:13 who nosed out Albert Korir, also of Kenya in 2:08:36. Joyciline Jepkosgei of Kenya was the first woman finisher in 2.22:38 followed by Mary Keitany of Kenya in 2.23.32.

The stories in the television coverage focused on these four and numerous others who had finished. There also was coverage of elderly persons, a heart attack survivor, amputees, wheelchair contestants, and some first timers.

With that information, here are some questions for you to consider:

• Were Joyciline Jepkosgei and Geoffrey Kamworor the only winners - they had the two best times of all the entrants. Were the other 53,506 runners losers?

• Were the finishers who set new (PRs) personal records winners?

• Were the people who ran for the fun of it and experienced Joy: losers?

• Was Daniel Romanchuk of the USA, who led the men’s wheelchair group a winner?

• How about Marcel Hug of Switzerland who came in .01second behind him? Was he a loser?

• The same questions can be asked about Manuela Schar of Switzerland and Tatyana McFadden of the USA who came in first and second in the women’s wheelchair group.

• And there are the same questions about the elderly and amputee participants.

What determines whether you win or lose? Who determines whether you are a winner or a loser?

Can you decide if someone else is a winner or a loser?

How much do we allow others to judge whether we are successful and how much judging of others do we do?

Understanding one’s perspective on achievement is important. Achievement can be determined by your beliefs around two interconnected concepts - process and product. Defining achievement can be based on efforts taken and joy experienced in pursuit of a goal or by the cumulative outcome or results of those efforts.

In a society focused on individualism and beating others, our beliefs around achievement impact both our internal narrative and external interactions. Motivations and joyful experiences are impacted through our internal assessments of our efforts and attitudes. While our relationships and shared experiences with others are strongly influenced by our view of whether one is a winner through their efforts or defined by the trophy.