How to Be Like Mike

by Pat Williams

  When I get a little money, I buy books. And if any is left, I buy food and clothes.

  —Erasmus

  Bill believed that“With a book, you can be anything you want. With TV, you watch what someone predetermines you should watch. You can be anything with a book. You can be in any part of the world. You can be with Marco Polo in China. The next day you can be in the South Sea islands with Melville. You can be Tom Sawyer or Huck Finn on a raft. No other way can you find that ability to be so many different people in so many different places.”

  I cannot emphasize this point enough. Our society constantly attempts to determine the reason for the degeneration of its youth’s knowledge. The answer is wrapped in the printed word, in an entire generation of readers who have been swallowed by television. A statistic: If you finish this book, and if you read one more book each month for the next year, you are among the top 1 percent of intellectuals in America.

  Old men are always advising young men to save money. That is bad advice. Don’t save every nickel. Invest in yourself. I never saved a dollar until I was forty years old.

  —Henry Ford

  It is such a simple step toward self-improvement, and yet so few people carve out the time to do it. Football coach John McKay tried to read one book a day. Wow!

  The Chain of Responsibility

  Certainly there is another layer of responsibility beyond just our education and our health, the literal halves of ourselves. Once we have begun to acquire understanding and knowledge, we are accountable for the ways in which we utilize them. Here’s what I’m talking about:

  Attitude

  (or, the Way We Think)

  I grew up idolizing St. Louis Cardinals icon Stan Musial, and today I cannot think of him without recalling a story from St. Louis sportswriter Bob Broeg about Musial’s playing days. One day, Broeg recalls, a Cardinals player nearly skipped into the clubhouse, bubbling with enthusiasm. He burbled, “I feel great! My home life is happy. I’m in a groove. I feel like I’m going to get two hits today.”

  Product and price can be attractive to customers. But your attitude is what brings them back or drives them away.

  —Mark Holmes

  SPEAKER

  He turned to Musial. He said, “Ever feel that way, Stan?”

  “Every day,” Musial said.

  Roger Bannister broke one of humankind’s seemingly impassable barriers when he ran a sub-four-minute mile in 1954;it was a feat preceded by months of excruciating physical practice. But there was more to it than that. In order to shatter the boundaries, he had to visualize shattering the boundaries. And so he imagined his run, all of it, every stride, every turn, every second from start to finish.

  A year after Bannister’s run, thirty-seven people broke the barrier, and within another year, three hundred more had done it. Today it is commonplace, but it was Bannister’s run that gave them the strength, the ability, the belief.

  “My mother,” Michael Jordan said, “planted the belief that the ability to achieve starts in your mind.”

  Football coach Bill Walsh said, “It’s almost a serene, purist state of mind you get in when you’re competing with full, ultimate confidence, poise, self-assurance and preparation. “It’s the negatives that you don’t want to cross your mind; the apprehension about whether you’re good enough, whether you’re prepared, or the fear that your opponent is simply better than you are. You must train yourself to cut through all that.”

  Our thinking can restrain us. Or it can power us forward.

  Words

  (or, the Way We Talk)

  There is a certain responsibility in being thrust into the public spotlight. Your words are scrutinized. You have to be very careful. You have to watch your mouth, control your voice, stem your emotion. This is something Jordan did with a meticulousness that belied his status. Few people were more studied or more well-attended by media—not even some world leaders—and yet Jordan never allowed himself to make a blatant slip, to let anger or frustration overcome him.

  The best of conversations occur when there is no competition, no vanity, but a calm, quiet interchange of sentiments.

  —Samuel Johnson

  WRITER

  We are not facing the same universal pressures as Jordan, but there’s no reason why our expectations for ourselves shouldn’t be just as stringent. Words define us. Sometimes we say things we shouldn’t. There are those rare moments when we can’t restrain it. But what we can help is how often we let it happen, and how we control our language amid the routine of our daily lives. This is our responsibility.

  Hearing

  (or, the Way We Listen)

  It is the disease of not listening, the malady of not marking, that I am troubled withal.

  —William Shakespeare

  There is no use even bothering with conversation if we are only preoccupied with our own concerns. The problem is that most of us don’t utilize conversation the way we should—to absorb and consider the knowledge and viewpoint of others. Instead, we filter everything through the lens of our own concerns, we worry about formulating an appropriate reply and we don’t really listen.

  I knew Michael Jordan was unusual from the second day of practice his freshman year. I was teaching some pressure defense principles and saw Michael was doing it incorrectly. I went over it with him. I thought it would take him two weeks to learn it. The next day, Michael had it down perfectly. I said, “What did you do, stay up all night studying?” He said, “Coach, I’m a good listener. I do what I’m supposed to do.”

  —Dean Smith

  The average person can speak about 150 words per minute;we are able, if we hone our listening skills, to hear as many as 600 words per minute. It is a way to build trust and self-esteem in our relationships. It is a way to build our own self-defense.

  Former Secretary of State Dean Rusk stated, “One of the best ways to persuade others is with your ears— by listening to them.”

  Some simple solutions for listening more effectively, borrowed from Listening in Everyday Life, by Michael Purdy and Deborah Borisoff are:

  Keep quiet. It signals your receptiveness.

  Don’t lead. Asking leading questions is a way of directing the conversation.

  Resist giving advice unless they ask directly. Often, people are not searching for solutions to their problems; they just want someone to engage them.

  Remain neutral. Don’t agree or disagree, approve or disapprove.

  Don’t react defensively. If you hear something that bothers you, avoid showing it.

  Avoid clichés. This only leads people to think you’re anxious to get away from them.

  Friends

  (or, the Way We Build Relationships)

  Friendship is the hardest thing in the world to explain. It’s not something you learn in school, but if you haven’t learned the meaning of friendship, you haven’t really learned anything.

  —Muhammad Ali

  Perhaps it isn’t something we think about often, but we are responsible for the friends we choose. Sometimes friends fall into our lives. Sometimes they fall out. It is our responsibility to encircle ourselves with friends who enrich us, who encourage us, who boost us, who help us believe that our goals will become reality. Which leads me to the story of the monkeys. Although it’s not a story, really. It’s an experiment in friendship.

  Four monkeys were placed in a room with a tall pole in the center and a cluster of bananas suspended at the top of the pole. One of the monkeys began climbing the pole. He was doused with cold water as he reached for the banana. He scampered down the pole and abandoned the bananas. The other three monkeys also tried—they were doused, they scampered down and they gave up.

  Keep away from people who try to belittle your ambitions. Small people always do that, but the really great make you feel that you, too, can become great.

  —Mark Twain

  One of the monkeys was removed from the room and replaced with a new monkey. He began to climb the pole. The other
three monkeys tugged at him, scraped at him, pulled him to the ground. One by one, each of the original monkeys was replaced, until there were four monkeys in a room, dancing around the pole, afraid to climb, even though none of them knew why.

  Author Danny Cox writes, “Don’t walk away from negative people—run!”

  It speaks loudly that Jordan, despite his immense fame, never became immersed in the tragic saga of so many modern athletes: the tug and pull of pseudo-friendships, of those who are determined to use the skills and assets of others to accomplish their own needs. This is what led to the downfall of Sammie Smith, the former Miami Dolphins running back who was jailed for dealing cocaine.

  “I didn’t need the money,” Smith said. “These were my friends, and I just couldn’t turn my back on them. We saw an easy way to make money.”

  Minutiae

  (or, the Way

  We Deal with the

  Little Things)

  Always check the small things.

  —General Colin Powell

  The best athletes are attuned to the tiniest facets of their game, to the specks of detail that delineate success and failure. Not long ago the Ted Williams Museum bought a bat that a collector had paid twenty thousand dollars for, because it was supposedly used by Williams during his miraculous 1941 season (he hit . 406 that year, the last player to eclipse . 400).

  When he saw the bat, Williams closed his eyes and squeezed the handle.

  “Yeah,” he finally said. “This is one of my bats.” Someone asked how he knew.

  “In 1940 and 1941,” he said, “I cut a groove in the handle of my bats to rest my right index finger. I can still feel the groove.”

  Attention to detail doesn’t get much more minute than that.

  Take small steps. Don’t let anything trip you up. All those steps are like pieces of a puzzle. They come together to form a picture. When it’s complete, you’ve reached your ultimate goal, step by step. I can’t see any other way of accomplishing anything.

  —Michael Jordan

  Companies succeed, and people succeed, because they don’t allow for failure. FedEx tests its package sorters once each quarter for accuracy; anyone who doesn’t score 100 percent is sent back for re-training. Sony tolerates only one failure among thousands of parts when evaluating the production of its camcorders. John Wooden used to show his incoming basketball recruits at UCLA how to lace up their shoes and put on their socks properly to avoid blisters.

  Don’t be afraid to give your best to what, seemingly, are small jobs. Every time you conquer one, it makes you that much stronger.

  —Dale Carnegie

  Meanwhile, we live in a society that is much more tolerant of failure and imperfection: Over eighteen thousand pieces of mail will be mishandled in the next hour; fifty-five malfunctioning automated-teller machines will be installed and two hundred thousand incorrect drug prescriptions will be written over the next twelve months; and over one hundred incorrect medical procedures will be performed by the end of the day.

  Creativity

  (or, the Way We Imagine)

  The only factory asset we have is human imagination.

  —Bill Gates

  I arrived in Orlando in June 1986 to promote a team that didn’t exist. We were just trying to convince the NBA to even consider us as a potential franchise site. We had no arena, no community interest and no encouragement from the NBA. I spoke at service clubs, at business meetings, at conventions and churches. I spoke to whoever would have me. I developed a routine. I said, “Folks, when we get our team and it runs out onto the floor of the new arena, you’d better have your tickets. When Bird and Magic and Jordan come to town, you don’t want to be on the outside, nose pressed against the glass, flapping your arms and yelling at me to open the doors. Because all I’ll be able to tell you is that you should have ordered your tickets back then.”

  I think of that now on the nights our arena is sold-out, the aisles filled, the building warm with support. I think of that and I think of the story of one of my adopted sons, Brian, who, when he was thirteen and immersed in a grueling swimming lesson, stopped halfway through his laps.

  Imagination is the beginning of creation. We imagine what we desire. We will what we imagine, and at last, we create what we will.

  —George Bernard Shaw

  WRITER

  “You can do that work, Brian,” his coach told him. “You just have to push yourself.”

  “I know I can do the work,” Brian said. “But my head just won’t let me.”

  It is our responsibility to free our imaginations, to dream beyond any limitations. It is our responsibility to dream wildly, to dream without boundaries.

  Nobody did that better thanWalt Disney. He once said, “Disneyland will never be completed. It will continue to grow as long as there is imagination in the world.”

  And yet so many of us tread through a corporate culture that drowns creativity and imagination. Our colleges and universities and MBA programs and law schools produce like-thinking drones, their attitudes tailored to fit the whims of accounting firms and law offices. We don’t encourage new ways of thinking; we expect the young to perpetuate the old ways. And those who don’t think within that box are ostracized, like my mentor, Bill Veeck, whose outrageous ideas alienated him from baseball’s establishment.

  The most important thing I learned from big companies is that creativity gets stifled when everyone’s got to think within the box.

  —David Kelley

  EXECUTIVE

  Much of what Jordan did was unprecedented in the NBA—his signature moves, his wagging tongue, his shaved head;he generated his own unique style. If we expect the upcoming generations to continue producing such unique genius, we have to encourage it. We have to applaud new ways of thinking instead of muffling them.

  Control

  (or, the Way We

  Comprehend the Limits of

  Our Responsibilities)

  If you get yourself too engrossed in things over which you have no control, it will adversely affect the things over which you do have control.

  —John Wooden

  When I was in Spartanburg, South Carolina, in the 1960s, running the Phillies’minor-league club, I was a mess. I worried about the weather and about our lousy record and about how that might affect our attendance and about how that might affect my upward mobility. I worried about everything; I worried until I nearly tore out my stomach lining.

  My boss was awiseman. His namewas R. E. Littlejohn. He had a way with advice. One day he told me, “Control those things that you can control. Let the rest go.”

  I still struggle with that. It’s hard to accept that things sometimes happen without your input, that there’s nothing you can do to change them. I did what I could in Spartanburg, and I do what I can now; sometimes it doesn’t feel like it’s enough. But it is an overwhelming task taking care of ourselves, of our own responsibilities, without delving into the problems of others.

  My children are growing up. I can’t even control them like I used to. All I can offer them now is my attitude, my approach, and a promise that even if they do get a tattoo, I will still love them.

  CHAPTER SIX

  THE CHAMPION

  OF THE

  WHOLE WORLD

  JORDAN ON INFLUENCE:

  I think everyone, when they’re kids, tries to pretend they’re someone else. I’d be playing basketball with my friends, or with my older brother, and I’d get the ball, and I’d say, “I’m David Thompson” or “I’m Walter Davis,” because they were older people who were playing basketball in North Carolina.

  When you’re a kid, you don’t want to emulate someone. . . . You actually want to be that person. You don’t think of it in terms of wanting to grow up and be the same kind of person he is. You just want to be him, that’s all.

  Whether we want to admit it or not, we’re all hero worshippers. We don’t have cowboys anymore. We don’t have war heroes to admire. So most of the heroes today
are athletes.

  —Bobby Bowden

  Florida State football coach

  When he was a rookie in the NBA, Michael Jordan bought himself a coat. It was a Russian raccoon coat, thick and gaudy W and made from expensive fur. To complement it, Jordan wore a host of glimmering necklaces and a few chunky rings. It wasn’t his style, really, but he was copying, trying to ingratiate himself. He dressed the way he saw others dressing. When he showed up at the NBA All-Star game that season, the players froze him out. They refused to pass him the ball. Behind Jordan’s back, they were talking. To them, the coat exemplified Jordan’s attitude; he was seen as showy and self-centered and focused on the flash of his game.

  “Whoever I was trying to be that first year,” Jordan said, “it wasn’t me.”

  So he changed his clothes. And he changed his image. He began wearing suits, mostly conservative in color and cut, yet with an understated elegance. Every night of his career, Jordan wore a suit, amid the frigid and sloppy Chicago winters, amid the stifling warmth of early summer. His career escalated;people began to watch him more vigilantly. He wore a suit for the brief walk from the hotel lobby to the team bus, from the team bus to the locker room, because every moment became an opportunity—to dignify himself, to elevate his image in the eyes of the children who idolized him.

  “The fifteen seconds it takes for him to go from the elevator to the bus is the only time in some fan’s lives that they might see him,” wrote Chicago Tribune columnist Bob Greene. “Jordan wants those fifteen seconds to be dignified, because he knows those will be the fifteen seconds that they saw Michael Jordan.” Greene continued, “Mike plays every game as if it were his last because he knows that in the stands are some fans who will never see him play again, other than that night.”