How to Be Like Mike

by Pat Williams

  History informs us of past mistakes, from which we can learn without repeating them. It also inspires us and gives us confidence and hope bred of victories already won.

  —William Hastie

  POLITICIAN AND JUDGE

  This is the only way to live, really. Otherwise we make promises to ourselves that we have no real intent of keeping. We become buried in regret, in lost dreams, in the consequence of our actions instead of the joy of them.

  “Tomorrow, I don’t know what I’m going to do,” Jordan said. “I think about today. People don’t believe I don’t know what’s going to happen next week, next month or next year, but I truly live in the moment. I have created the opportunity to have a choice. That is how I’m going to live.”

  There is no medicine like hope. No incentive so great, and no tonic so powerful as expectation of something better tomorrow.

  —Orison Swett Marsden

  AUTHOR

  Of course, it helps to chart our wishes, and make allowances for them so as to always be maximizing our present, guaranteeing our future. It’s why some Japanese companies have one-hundred-year plans, and why Walt Disney had what he called a fifty-year master plan.

  “Life can be understood by looking backward,” said philosopher SØren Kierkegaard, “but it must be lived forward.”

  Perhaps this may bewhy sinceWest Point was founded in 1802, only one class has been a staple of the curriculum— map reading. Knowing how to get from here to there is the most important part of any enterprise.

  And this is why our goals carry such weight.

  If Only I Had

  Done This When I

  Was Young . . .

  Show me a person without goals and I'll show you someone who’s dead.

  —George Allen

  former NFL coach

  Susie Maroney had tried it once and failed. She was twenty-two the first time, in June 1996. She’d swam 107 miles in 38½ hours, starting in Cuba, heading across the Straits of Florida toward Key West, banging repeatedly into a cage she’d been swimming inside for protection from sharks. Finally, with her body ravaged by seasickness and dehydration, she collapsed twelve miles from shore.

  It was not close enough for Maroney. There was no satisfaction. There was only the thought of bridging those twelve miles, of the goal, of becoming the first woman to swim the Straits of Florida.

  Less than a year later, she jumped into the water outside Havana. The seawater bloated her tongue. The fifteen-foot swells toyed with her stomach. Jellyfish stung her repeatedly. The sun wore at her insides like a furnace. The cage battered her skin.

  Twenty-four-and-one-half hours later, Maroney emerged on the shore at Key West. As she was talking to reporters, she fainted.

  It didn’t matter. She’d already made it.

  Far away, there in the sunshine, are my highest aspirations. I may not reach them, but I can look up and see their beauty, believe in them, and try to follow where they head.

  —Louisa May Alcott

  AUTHOR

  Our goals are what separate us from the wasteland of confused and uncertain voices, from people who hedge and complain and lack faith in themselves. Studies have shown that people who set goals are not merely happier, but more successful. A study of one graduating class at Harvard revealed that only 3 percent of the student body had set clear goals for their future. Twenty years later, the 3 percent had made more money and accomplished more than the other 97 percent combined.

  The first setback of Michael Jordan’s basketball career has become a treasured anecdote for high-schoolers everywhere. And why shouldn’t it? It was the first hurdle Jordan was forced to overcome, when he was cut from the varsity team as a sophomore in high school, and the way he overcame it was simply by concentrating on making the team the next year, by visualizing it, by refusing to fall short of his goal. “When it happened,” he said, “I set another goal . . . a reasonable, manageable goal that I could realistically achieve if I worked hard enough. I approached everything step by step.”

  Success is not a destination; it is a journey. The happiest people I know are those who are working toward specific objectives. The most bored and miserable people I know are those who are drifting along with no worthwhile objectives in mind.

  —Zig Ziglar

  SPEAKER AND AUTHOR

  Each challenge was different, another rung in the ladder. Jordan believes, “You have to expect things of yourself before you can do them.”

  And then there is the story of John Goddard, who, at fifteen years old, heard his grandmother and aunt telling each other, “If only I had done this when I was young . . .” So Goddard sat down and wrote out a list of 127 goals he wanted to accomplish, including seventeen mountains he wanted to climb and ten rivers he wanted to explore. He wanted a career in medicine. He wanted to retrace the travels of Marco Polo and ride a horse in the Rose Bowl Parade, to read the collected works of Shakespeare, to dive in a submarine, to play the flute and violin, to marry and have children.

  By the time he was forty-seven, he’d hit 103 of the goals on his list. He became a highly paid lecturer, speaking of his adventures, a walking testament to the value of goal-setting.

  Ted Leland, athletic director at Stanford University said, “I know enough about sports psychology to know that athletes who have definite goals tend to succeed better than those with nebulous ambitions.” Leland subscribes to the BHAG Theory, taught by author Jerry Porras:“Big, Hairy, Audacious Goals!”

  Eight points per quarter. This is all he wanted. For seven consecutive seasons, Jordan’s scoring averages were remarkably consistent, all near or above thirty-two points per game. But he never thought of thirty-two points as thirty-two points. He thought of thirty-two points as eight per quarter, and eight per quarter was certainly a manageable number, four field goals in twelve minutes, something he could do rather easily most nights.

  In motivational speaking circles, this is called the salami technique, because to contemplate the wholeness of a goal can often be intimidating, like staring at an entire salami in all of its greasy glory. But cut it into slices, and suddenly each piece becomes its own appetizing entity.

  The small battles come first. The mind picks itself up from there. In 1996, at model Margaux Hemingway’s funeral in Ketchum, Idaho, her father, Jack, described a story from her childhood as a metaphor for her life, which ended in suicide. Jack said, “Margaux could ski down Bald Mountain faster than anyone. I asked her why she didn’t join the junior ski team and she said, ‘Dad, when they set the course, I can ski down fast, but when I see the gate, I just can’t go through it. ’”

  Tommy Moe had never won a World Cup skiing event before the 1994 Olympic Games in Lillehammer, Norway. He focused on two minuscule cues: making strong turns on his outside ski, and keeping his hands forward. “I knew if I concentrated on those two things, I would ski fast,” he said.

  Moe won the gold medal.

  My wife, Ruth, who is a speaker for the FranklinCovey Co. and teaches the 7 Habits of Highly Effective People class, tells a story about another gold medal winner in the 2000 Summer Olympics— Marion Jones. Her story is also an inspiration, especially for all the female “Mikes” out there. Jones said, “We were raised to believe that anything you wanted in life, you wrote it down. You thought about it, you believed it, and then you went out and got the things you needed to accomplish it. Everything is obtainable.” Very few of us twenty-, thirty-, forty-, fifty- or sixty-somethings will ever win Olympic gold medals. But I can win nineteen gold medals in “Dad” ; I can win a gold medal in“husband” ; I can win a gold medal in “learning” and “health” and “career” —in the things that really matter to me. It’s not impossible. But it takes focus, passion, hard work, perseverance, responsibility, leadership, and character. It takes desire. Like Mike, Marion Jones has it. Do you?

  While we can talk of setting goals, and we can talk of achieving them in increments, the truth is that most people still don’t make it. The reas
on is not difficult to ascertain. It’s because they get lost in the most difficult aspect of the journey, because they don’t have the wherewithal, the self-discipline, to push toward their objective.

  Talent matters. Of course it does.

  But talent can fizzle without a harness. That’s what Bobby Knight meant when he said, “Self-discipline is doing what has to be done; doing it when it has to be done, doing it the best it can be done, and doing it that way every time you do it.”

  “Michael Jordan is discipline,” B. J. Armstrong said. “Not some of the time. Not most of the time. All of the time.”

  We must improve ourselves by victory over ourselves. There must be contests, and we must win.

  —Edward Gibbon

  HISTORIAN

  He learned it from his father, and from his coach at North Carolina, Dean Smith. Defense, Smith reminded him, was what won games. So Jordan worked on his defense and eventually became the best defensive player in the NBA. Every pickup game, every practice, was an opportunity to improve, to polish the weaker aspects of his game. There was never an acceptance of sufficiency. There was always room for more. “I visualized what I wanted to be,” he said. “I knew exactly where I wanted to go.”

  I’ve never known a man worth his salt who, in the long run, deep down in his heart, didn’t appreciate the grind, the discipline. I firmly believe that any man’s finest hour, the greatest fulfillment to all he holds dear, is that moment when he has worked his heart out in a good cause, and lies exhausted on the field of battle, victorious.

  —Vince Lombardi

  HALL OF FAME FOOTBALL COACH

  Before Jordan, there was Bill Russell who believed, “You can do anything you set your mind to.” You can make an argument that, other than Jordan, no one in the history of basketball was better than Russell, the center for the Celtics. Russell was such a perfectionist he would keep his own personal scorecard for each game. His standards were ridiculously high: twenty-five rebounds, eight assists, eight blocks, 60 percent field-goal percentage. He wanted to run all the plays, to set every pick, to fill the lane properly.

  He graded himself from one to one hundred. In twelve hundred games, he never scored higher than a sixty-five.

  The sign on the gate of Tchaikovsky’s home warned, “Visiting hours Monday and Tuesday between 3 and 5 P. M. Other times, please do not ring.”

  He was a composer. Music, not idle conversation, was his gift to the world.

  This is discipline.

  But what leads us along this path, and what subjects us to such willingness to sacrifice ourselves for our goal? At the essence of a goal fulfilled there is the incandescent ember of something else, the notion that led us here, that holds our heads steady in the midst of the grind.

  At the essence of a goal is a dream.

  Of Course I’ve Got Dreams

  Nothing happens unless first a dream.

  —Carl Sandburg

  We can speak all we want in the language of planning and motivation and focus, of maximizing your days and achieving your goals. But none of it means anything if you don’t begin with a dream, if there is not a reason to push forward, a reason to concentrate, a reason to discipline yourself.

  Susie Maroney wanted to swim. John Goddard wished to experience an adventurous life. And Michael Jordan merely wanted to be recognized as the best basketball player who ever lived.

  For some, it starts with that intense vision. For Jordan, it didn’t.

  “I really didn’t know much about professional basketball,” he said. “I kept my dreams so much in reach, rather than dreaming about something so far ahead. I kept my dreams closer to me, and more realistic. One step at a time.”

  Don’t part with your illusions. When they are gone you may still exist, but you cease to live.

  —Jonathan Swift

  WRITER

  We all dream differently, at varied scales, with diverse focus. The importance is not the range of your dream. The importance is the continued and dogged pursuit of it.

  As a student of the self-professed motivational gurus, I spend my time buried in books espousing philosophies and doctrines. And as this book and its eleven-chapter thesis proves, we enjoy formulas. We make our living with lists. I borrow one here, then, from Mike Murdock, who presents fifteen thoughts to help you achieve an uncommon dream:

  1. Dreams are born or borrowed.

  2. Your dream may require encouragement from others at first.

  3. Your dream does not always require the approval of someone you love.

  4. Your dream can start with whatever is in your heart today.

  5. You already have what it takes to launch an uncommon dream—DESIRE.

  6. Your dream will require a true hunger for attainment.

  7. Your dream must become your magnificent obsession.

  8. Your dream must be energizing enough to cause you to make a change in your daily routine.

  9. An uncommon dream will require immediate attention.

  10. Your dream deserves your total focus.

  11. Your dream may require a geographical change.

  12. Your dream will always require the assistance of others.

  13. Your dream may require extraordinary negotiations with others.

  14. You must always build your daily agenda around your dream.

  15. You must nurture and protect those relationships connected to your dream.

  Nowread this list again. Pause after each one, and think of Michael Jordan, of what we’ve discussed, of what we know about this man, of the encouragement he received, of the desire he emanated, of the“magnificent obsession,” of the “total focus.” It all seems to fit, doesn’t it?

  I don’t design clothes. I design dreams.

  —Ralph Lauren

  It’s a dream, after all, that blesses us with the focus to block out everything else. It’s the realization of a dream that affords us true bliss, as basketball did for Michael Jordan.

  And what keeps those dreams in the box? What produces such self-consciousness?

  Often, it’s merely a realization. It’s the understanding that we can’t control the path of our dreams, that sometimes they become derailed by events or actions that we cannot affect. This devastates us. This forces us back into the box. And this destroys the whole process. And in the end, it might destroy us.

  One of my favorite writers, the late Erma Bombeck, observed: “There are people who put their dreams in a little box and say, ‘Yes, I’ve got dreams, of course I’ve got dreams. ’ Then they put the box away and bring it out once in a while to look at it, and yep, they’re still there. These are great dreams, but they never even get out of the box. It takes an uncommon amount of guts to put your dreams on the line, to hold them up and say, ‘How good am I or how bad am I?’”

  If you have a dream, don’t let anything dim it.

  —Christa McAuliffe

  TEACHER/ASTRONAUT

  It’s out of Your Hands

  I play the game over in my mind and get out of it what I can. I’ll think about it for a while, then let it go. I’m strong enough mentally to put it away.

  —Michael Jordan

  There are times when it’s not our fault, times when we’ve done everything to prepare for the moment, to enjoy the flush of success, and we fall short. Every shot Jordan took had such immense preparation behind it. And yet his career field-goal percentage was barely above fifty percent. Which means he failed half the time, sometimes even in weighty moments, late in the game or deep in the postseason.

  But there was always a next time. And he had the fortitude to shake off the daunting notion of failure, to take the same shot again, to recognize that our destiny is not always under our own power.

  In sports, in business, in life, we have a tendency to blame ourselves when something goes wrong. We assume we control everything about our professional lives, and we become mired in self-doubt. And while we flounder, our dreams continue to tiptoe above our grasp.

  Rem
ember what you can’t control: death, undeserved criticism, a job transfer, illness. And remember what you can control: your time, your effort, your thoughts, your tongue, your attitude, your choice of friends, your commitments, your response to failure.

  You can always count on baseball players for pithy philosophies, if nothing else. Here, then, in that great Yogi Berra tradition, is former outfielder Mickey Rivers:

  “Don’t worry about things you have no control over, because you have no control over them,” he says. “Don’t worry about the things that you have control over, because you have control over them.”

  One of the measures of Jordan’s impact is that everyone who met him seems to carry away a story. For Mary Lou Retton, the Olympic gymnast, it came when she asked about the death of his father, about how he dealt with the pain and the loss.

  Jordan shrugged. Said he did the best he could with it. Tried to take something positive away. “I had him for thirty-one years,” he said. “Some people don’t even have a father for two or three.”

  There was nothing he could do. He couldn’t bring his father back. He couldn’t prevent the crime, couldn’t lash out anymore at the men who’d committed the crime. It was characteristic of Jordan’s acceptance of the random order of events, and his recognition of that which he couldn’t alter.

  Immense power is acquired by assuring yourself, in your secret reveries, that you were born to control affairs.

  —Andrew Carnegie

  INDUSTRIALIST

  Of course, the common reaction to unalterable courses of events—to delays, to market fluctuations, to trends, to the action of our competitors—is panic or rage or despair. We overreact, unspooling our emotions, unraveling our concentration. We lose our train of thought. We lose sight of our direction.

  “My grandparents always used to say, ‘Think before you act, and be in control at all times, ’” Jordan said. “I always remembered that. You forget about the outcome. You know you are doing the right things, so you relax and perform. After that, you can’t control anything anyway. It’s out of your hands, so don’t worry about it.”