“‘(Reporter) Do you view this season as a failure?’
‘That’s the wrong question. There’s no failure in sports. Every year you work, you work towards a goal. To be able to take care of your family, provide a house for them, or take care of your parents. You work towards a goal. It’s not a failure. It’s Steps to Success. There’s good days, bad days. Some days you are able to be successful. Some days you’re not. Some days it’s your turn, some days it’s not your turn.’”
– Giannis Antetokounmpo, in Giannis The Marvelous Journey
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“I CAME TO CHICAGO WITH NO EXPECTATIONS. NONE. THE ONLY PRESSURE I FELT WHEN I WENT TO THE NBA WAS TO PROVE I DESERVED TO PLAY ON THAT LEVEL. And that was easy because it was a step-by-step process: playing hard every day in practice, playing against veteran teammates, making the starting five, then playing against NBA players in games. No one knew what I was capable of scoring, and no one tried to define me by putting a number to those expectations. No one had in mind what would be acceptable for me. After the first year, the expectations came, but by that time I had positive habits. I had built a foundation for my game, so it wasn’t a surprise to me. I UNDERSTOOD THAT THE REASON I WAS GETTING ATTENTION WAS BECAUSE OF THE WORK I HAD PUT IN UP TO THAT POINT, NOT BECAUSE OF WHAT I HAD DONE TO MEET OTHER PEOPLE’S EXPECTATION FOR ME.”
– Michael Jordan, Driven From Within
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Failure can be reframed as a lesson, and lessons should have no end.
If you stop turning up for lessons, the learning stops. Our growth, which represents life, slows and we are in danger of stagnation, then rot.
It’s in the expansion and retraction, where we strike forth with new ideas and ventures, that we really live.
Inevitably, by trying, we fail. We are forced to withdraw when something doesn’t work.
A new route must be found.
We retrace our steps often.
The steps to success are not an inevitable journey. We are not on a conveyor belt that automatically delivers us to our goal.
We must take those steps to success ourselves. And because we are not machines we will trip and stumble. Why blame ourselves for our imperfection?
Perhaps failure, true failure, is not meeting our own expectations, allowing ourselves to come up short on what we know we could do.
People like Michael and Giannis are remarkable because of their ability to focus and to be relentless in their pursuit of a goal.
Sport is a way for us to witness humans striving in a controlled environment. We can observe athletes like scientists looking for a cure for complacency.
We are free to choose the game in which we experiment.
The arena where I choose to pursue my humble goal of excellence is on this blog.
Writing is a form of play in which I am happy to put in the hours of practice.
And so failure for me, which would result with my head in my hands, would be if I said it was ok to stop practicing and sit on the sidelines, by not writing.
I don’t know what success looks like in any larger sense other than my ability to schedule a post and go to bed content.
Whatever else has happened in my day, I’ve taken that small step in the right direction. Even though I can’t see what the destination is.
I’ll sort out the details along the way.
Conversations With Quotations 