MJ Mondays | Bloody Hands

Growing up, I would hear stories about how hard Michael Jordan practiced. Teammates and coaches all talked about how competitive he was in practice and how much he pushed everybody on his team. They talked about how he hated to lose in everything, even in card games, and when he would lose, he would make you keep playing until he would not only beat you but destroy you.

The inspiring thing about Jordan to me was that he would challenge the best, people better at certain things than him, so that they could push him. He would challenge the best shooters to shooting competitions, card players to card games, and ping-pong players to ping-pong games. He wasn't afraid to lose. He knew that he had to lose to win.

One of his coaches said that when they would do shooting drills, Jordan would never want to be on the team with the best shooters. This forced him to shoot under pressure. His coach said that if his team lost, Jordan would yell, "Run it back, run it back." He never wanted an easy win in practice, and he never wanted to end on a loss.

Teammate B.J. Armstrong said that their famous card games would last forever because Michael never loses. Whatever he's doing, he's going to win because he's going to keep on playing.

At the peak of his career, Jordan famously retired from basketball to try to play major league baseball for the Chicago White Sox. The White Sox's batting coach Walter Hriniak said that he hated Jordan because he thought Jordan was playing baseball for publicity. Hriniak said that he wasn't going to work with him and he didn't want anything to do with him, but one day he told Jordan to meet him at 7:30 in the morning to workout, and Jordan came every day until his hands were bleeding. Walt grew to love Jordan and he loved that he would work until his hands were bleeding.

Billie Holiday was one of the most influential jazz singers of all time, and she is considered one of the best jazz vocalists ever. One of her famous quotes reminds me of Michael Jordan and his work ethic. She said, "The difficult I'll do right now. The impossible will take a while."

It is hard being great. That is why not a lot of people are great. You have to be willing to do the difficult things, and you have to be willing to take on the impossible. You have to know that you aren't the best at everything, but you have to be willing to do the work that it takes to get better so that you give yourself the chance to become the best.

This is also why I love coaching. Coaching is a structure that supports learning, and transformational coaching can take us from where we are now to where we want to go. Great coaches help athletes learn how to reflect on what they do and how they do it, they help their athletes understand themselves better, they help them grow their mindset, shift their beliefs, and build new habits. Great coaches can see who you are and what you do well, they find out who you want to be, and they help you become the athlete and person you want to be by shifting your mindset, growing your skills and building your resilience and ability to push through fatigue, stress, pain, and failure.

Michael Jordan knew he wanted to be the best. He wasn't afraid of failure, and he wasn't afraid of hard work. He knew that hard work and bloody hands were the only way, and he knew that failure was a part of the journey. He knew that it would hurt, he knew that he would lose, he knew that he would fail, and he did it anyway.