photo credit: ahaore­porter

“The spirit, the will to win, and the will to excel are the things that endure. These qual­i­ties are so much more impor­tant than the events that occur.” ~ Vince Lombardi

Win­ning.  A feel­ing of eupho­ria.  A feel­ing of accom­plish­ment.  That moment when we achieve the suc­cess we’ve been striv­ing for.

Soc­cer sea­son began this past week­end.  I have a team of twelve 9-year old boys that love soc­cer, and have a real desire to play hard and win.  Over the sum­mer, the team we had (many of the same play­ers) had a very tough loss where I wrote about the les­son we learn from losing.

This week­end was the start of a new soc­cer sea­son.  A group of 9-year old boys who love the sport.  Tough losses from last sea­son were for­got­ten.  Prac­tices to start the new sea­son were filled with much learn­ing.  There was a real sense of pos­i­tiv­ity on the whole team.

Game one of the sea­son.  We were play­ing on all cylin­ders.  Pass­ing was excel­lent.  For the most part, kids were play­ing their posi­tions.  The kids and I quickly felt con­fi­dent about our effort being put forth.  We started the game strong, and fin­ished with an easy win.  Every­one was excited with our first per­for­mance of the year.  As coach, I was extremely proud of their per­for­mance, and of the atti­tude they dis­played dur­ing and after the game.

There were sev­eral things we took away from this win.

• Team­work: By play­ing together as a team, we had suc­cess.  There were moments dur­ing the game when one per­son would become the team, and for­get every­one else.  The result:  we would lose the ball.  Con­versely when we really worked together as a team, pass­ing the ball, play­ing the posi­tions, we had suc­cess in mov­ing the ball up the field and get­ting a shot on goal.  Take­away: To be suc­cess­ful in life, we’re not going to do it all by our­selves.  We’ll need the help of oth­ers along the way, and we’ll need to work with oth­ers and develop a team atti­tude to get many of the things we desire in life.
• Basics: In prac­tice, we have been work­ing on the fun­da­men­tals.  Pass­ing, drib­bling, shoot­ing, defense, endurance.  We go over these at every prac­tice.  The idea is that we need to have the basics of soc­cer down before we can move on to more advanced moves.  We need to mas­ter the fun­da­men­tals.  These need to become second-nature.  Take­away: To be suc­cess­ful in life, we need to get the basics down, as well.  Things that we prac­tice over and over, learn­ing the basics of life.  Things like man­ners, per­sonal care, love, …  Things that will endure.
• Atti­tude: Atti­tude is an impor­tant part of play­ing sports.  In los­ing, or in win­ning.  In win­ning, it was impor­tant that we not run up the score, and be gra­cious when shak­ing hands with the other team after the game.  Know­ing what it’s like to be on the other end, it is impor­tant that our play­ers treat the other team with respect.  Take­away: We can’t always con­trol what hap­pens to us, but we can con­trol our atti­tude — whether the out­come is good or bad.  We can choose to be pos­i­tive, or we can choose to be neg­a­tive.  And, in choos­ing a pos­i­tive atti­tude, we have a much bet­ter oppor­tu­nity at suc­cess in our life.
• Have Fun: I have a team of boys that all love soc­cer.  They are there because they want to play.  They are out on the field dur­ing the game, laugh­ing, cheer­ing each other on, and gen­er­ally just hav­ing fun doing some­thing they love.  Take­away: When we do some­thing we love, and have fun doing it — suc­cess is with us every step of the way.

Win­ning!  Some­thing we all love to do — whether that’s a project at work, a marathon, or a life lived the way we desire.  And, if we work hard, have a pos­i­tive can-do atti­tude, and have fun — then we have given our­selves the ingre­di­ents for a life filled with many suc­cesses.  We will have cre­ated a win­ning life!

photo credit: Midnight-digital

“The world is but a can­vas to the imag­i­na­tion. ~ Henry David Thoreau

This week­end was a par­tic­u­larly try­ing time with my chil­dren.   We were away from home, and not in our nor­mal set­ting.  And, this led to some behav­ior issues with all three of them.  In the process, I ended up tak­ing away any priv­i­lege they had to watch­ing tele­vi­sion, or play­ing video games.  This became a pow­er­ful les­son — for me.  Not on how to pun­ish a child.  Or what works to cor­rect behavior.

This became a les­son in how to stim­u­late cre­ativ­ity.  With­out tele­vi­sion, com­put­ers, or video games, I watched as my chil­dren found new and cre­ative ways to have fun.

My youngest son got out an old skate­board we have — some­thing that hasn’t been used in at least a year.  And then, he decided to build a ramp for it — all by him­self.  In the end I helped him make it sturdy and safe.  But his orig­i­nal pro­to­type ramp was still a great exam­ple of cre­ative thinking.

My daugh­ter called a friend she hasn’t had over in prob­a­bly a year.  They had a blast play­ing together all after­noon.  And in the process, strength­ened a friend­ship that had begun to wane.

My old­est son played a game with me, and then another with his sis­ter.  When I played with him, we laughed, and even learned a few things from a game that we’d had in our drawer but never played.

This all hap­pened because they changed their rou­tine.  And, by chang­ing their rou­tine, new and cre­ative ideas came to them all.  Their cre­ativ­ity had been stim­u­lated.  In this case, we removed some­thing from their envi­ron­ment that was pas­sive (tele­vi­sion), and they replaced it with some­thing engag­ing the use of their brain.  And they found cre­ative ways to have fun!  All this took was a change in their nor­mal routine.

So, how do you stim­u­late cre­ativ­ity in your life?  Try chang­ing a rou­tine that you do, and see what kind of cre­ativ­ity this sparks.  Look at all the things you do over the course of a day.  How many of them are rou­tine?  Rou­tine, in that you always do some­thing the same way.  Iden­tify these, and then com­mit to chang­ing one of these rou­tine things you do.  And see what kind of cre­ativ­ity this sparks!

We are all cre­ative, but some­times our cre­ativ­ity gets buried in the rou­tines of our life.  Marelisa, over at Abun­dance Blog,  has writ­ten an arti­cle on 30 Ways to Increase Your Cre­ativ­ity.  What I have here is one way.  She gives you 30 ways to get that cre­ative spark we all have lit again.  Check it out, and see the many things we can do to get cre­ativ­ity flow­ing in our life.  It’s an excel­lent list, and one we can all learn some­thing from.

Using our minds in cre­ative ways, what we imag­ine can become a pow­er­ful way of rein­forc­ing what a life worth liv­ing is all about.  Go out and be cre­ative today!  Sur­prise your­self with what is possible!