"I'm Excited To Try This Tomorrow"

"I'm excited to try this tomorrow with my students!"

I was reading a book called, Coaching for Equity, and the author said, "If we close conversations with an opportunity for the client to name what they've learned and how they feel at the end of the conversation and they say, "I'm excited to try this tomorrow with my students!" - then they bring a moment of awareness to the positive emotions that come up from learning, and they've increased their resilience.

I thought, "How cool would it be if our athletes were this excited at practice? How cool would it be if our athletes said, 'I'm excited to try this tomorrow,' or, 'I'm excited to try this in the game?'"

When I first started coaching, my head coach said something that has impacted the rest of my career. He said, "No one can get better if you think they suck, and no one will want to learn from you if they don't like you and if you don't like them."

In my first few practices, I complained about some of our athletes' work ethic and grit. My coach would say to me, "I hear you, but what are you going to do about it?" He said:

"Great practices start with you and how you show up. Your feelings, your attitude, and how you show up will have a major impact on practice. Your attitude - your way of being - makes the difference between how you impact practice."

From that day on, I made a commitment to bringing as much positive energy as possible to every practice, and I started to hear our athletes more and more say things like, "I can't wait to try this in the game." The change happened when I changed.

Coaching for Equity says that if we aspire to create sustainable, transformative change in the people we work with, we need to focus on The Three B's: Behaviors, Beliefs, and Ways of Being.

Behavior is what we do; it's our skill set. We have to behave like the person we want to become. If I wanted to be the best coach in the country, I had to behave like it.

Belief is what we think and believe, and it comes from what we know and from our experiences. We have to have a growth mindset - the belief that we can learn, grow, and get better with practice.

Ways of being are how who we are and how we show up. It comes out in our emotions, communication, and levels of resilience.

My first head coach helped me change my entire way of being a coach. He changed my belief in myself and my athletes, and that helped me change my behavior and my ability to teach, coach, and impact my athletes.