A Coach's Diary

Why do you coach? How do you define success? Dan Hurley is one of the best college basketball coaches in the country, having led UConn to 2 straight national championships. But he is also know for a level of intensity that has cost his team games. In an early season tournament, Coach Hurley received a tech in a tie game that was in overtime, and his team lost because of it. After the game, legendary women's coach Geno Auriemma said to him, "If the only outcome that makes you a successful coach [...] is whether or not you hang up the national championship banner, then you should get out immediately." The message didn't resonate at first, so Coach Hurley said Geno followed him around practice and barked statements at him like: - The joy of your relationships with your players. - The joy of getting the most out of your team. Geno then said, "If you're only it it for the championship pursuit and none of that other stuff means anything to you anymore and it's ...

“You can’t connect the dots looking forward; you can only connect them looking backwards. So you have to trust that the dots will somehow connect in your future.” - Steve Jobs I enjoy a good commencement speech, and one of my favorites was Steve Jobs's at Stanford i n 2005. Jobs tells a story about how he dropped out of Reed College because it was expensive and he didn’t know what he wanted to do with his life. Instead of spending a lot of his parents' money on college classes that he didn’t know what to do with, he dropped in on classes that he enjoyed, like a calligraphy class that offered the best calligraphy instruction in the country. He said taking calligraphy classes taught him about fonts, spacing, and other typography concepts that he put into the design of the Mac computer. Jobs also said it was impossible to connect the dots looking forward. He said, “You can’t connect the dots looking forward, you can only connect them looking backwards. So you have to trust th...

“Always work hard and have fun in what you do because I think that's when you're more successful. You have to choose to do it.” - Simone Biles Simone Biles is the most decorated gymnast in history, but at the peak of her career at the 2020 Olympics, she had to withdraw from several of her events and took a two-year break to recover from the twisties. The twisties happen when a gymnast is in midair and loses their sense of where they are and how they’ll land, making the move risky. Biles described it as being "lost in the air." When she took her break, many people sympathized with her and applauded her for addressing mental health, but many others took this time to take shots at her and criticize her for a lack of mental toughness. This showed not only how a mental block can keep you from performing your best, but how many people will take any chance they get to knock you down. People will build you up when you are climbing the mountain, but when you get to the top,...

"We overestimate what we can do in one month, and we underestimate what we can do in 12 months, so resolutions often become a one-month thing." - Jay Shetty 365 days from now, who do you want to be, what do you want to be doing, and who do you want to be doing it with? These are questions author, podcaster, and influencer Jay Shetty says we should be asking to start a new year or season. Research says 80% of people stop practicing their New Year’s Resolutions by the end of January, so how can we find a better way to reset and start a new year? By focusing on doing the things we need to do so we can become the people we want to become. Jay says there are 4 types of seasons or years, and every year or season has a different feel and purpose: 1 - Learning 2 - Experimenting 3 - Performing 4 - Thriving Is this a learning year or season where you need to take a step back to learn, grow, and get better, or is this an experimenting season where you are trying to figure out what works...

"I did the ordinary things extra." - Kenny Smith Kenny Smith is best known for his work in the NBA on TNT, but he was also a great basketball player. He was a high school All-American, played for Dean Smith at the University of North Carolina, and won 2 championships with the Houston Rockets. When Kenny was in high school, he said he went from not being recruited at all as a junior with 0 scholarship offers to being an All-American and having scholarship offers from every school in the country as a senior. How did he do it? Work ethic and doing the ordinary things extra. He says, "Champions do daily what everyone else does occasionally. They aren’t extraordinary, they just do the ordinary extra." A mindset shift changed his work ethic, and a change in work ethic changed his career and life in just 6 months. Make the next 6 months your best 6 months by committing to doing just a few things you already do better, more consistently, or extra. Reflection Question: What ...

Failure is a part of everyone’s journey. The most successful people have a vision, create a plan, and stick to it no matter how much fear or failure they have or experience. Sara Blakely, the founder of Spanx, started with $5,000 and a dream and turned it into a billion-dollar business while balancing family and friends. In an interview with her husband, Jesse Itzler, Sara shared some of the keys to her success. Lemons Out of Lemonade Sara said she grew up wanting to be a lawyer because her dad was a trial attorney, but she was a terrible test-taker and after she bombed the LSAT twice, she changed the trajectory of her life. She said when bad things happen, they often feel like the worst thing ever but they often push us to our true purpose. Sara went to work at Disney for 3 months before taking a job selling fax machines for 7 years. She said she was kicked out of business every day, and one day decided she was in the wrong movie and wanted to do something different. Self-Discovery Sa...

Do you need a reason to keep going and not quit? Learn from one of the greatest, Tom Brady. Tom started his football career late and slowly, but he leveraged a growth mindset and a competitive spirit to become one of the best athletes of all time. We now know Tom Brady as one of the best quarterbacks ever to play, but he got a late start in football, he wasn’t very good when he started, and he had to overcome more adversity than most would go through on his journey to becoming a Hall of Fame, Super Bowl winning QB. In an interview titled The Leadership Playbook, Brady says he didn’t start playing football until he was a freshman in high school and was the backup QB who never played on a team that didn’t win any games. He said he became the starting JV QB the next year because the starting quarterback chose to quit football to play basketball. Brady grew into his body as a junior and became the starting varsity quarterback while working with a mentor who helped him improve his mechanics...