Read Coach by Michael Lewis last week.
The book is about his high school baseball coach, Billy Fitzgerald, who is more of a Bobby Knight type (yeah the opposite of my hero John Wooden), the stern man who makes you strong by imposing hardship on your life. And he does it the dictator way.
Quite some motivational ideas inside the book, but one that i really related to is about “quality of the struggle”: you can never be perfect, you will not bathe in glory all the time… but the point is, how hard do you try? What attitude you carry and what kind of efforts you put into this pursuit? What is the quality of your struggle?
Win or lose, the more you give, the more you gain. And grow.
John Wooden once said something like, it doesn’t matter what type of coach the team got, as long as the team members buy into the coach’s philosophy. Which explains why Bobby Knight and John Wooden (and i’m sure there many others) both became coaching legends despite the stark difference between their coaching styles.
There’s one thing in common though: it’s not about the sports, it’s about education; it’s not about winning games, but turning kids into men.
