photo credit: kaibara87

“If I had eight hours to chop down a tree, I’d spend six hours sharp­en­ing my ax” ~ Abra­ham Lin­coln

Pre­pare: to make ready before­hand for some pur­pose, use, or activity

Ath­letes do it.  Sports teams do it.  Air­line pilots do it.  Pro­fes­sional speak­ers do it. Musi­cians do it.  Event plan­ners do it.

Suc­cess­ful peo­ple do it.

Pre­pare.

It’s not always fun.  In fact, some­times the hours may seem long.  And it might not feel like you’re mak­ing any progress.  Yet, suc­cess comes from prepa­ra­tion.  The hours you spend prepar­ing make for more pos­i­tive, more uplift­ing, more suc­cess­ful hours in the time when it counts.

Plan for Success

Part of the prepa­ra­tion phase is  plan­ning for suc­cess.  This is about get­ting your­self into a state of belief.  Belief in your­self, and that you can accom­plish the task before you.  To take this one step fur­ther, beyond a belief in your­self, it’s also believ­ing you can be excel­lence.  Jen­nifer addresses this point very well in her post, What Real­ity Have You Cre­ated?, high­lighted by the fact that we see exactly what we tell our­selves is real.

“What­ever the mind can con­ceive and believe, the mind can achieve.” ~ Napoleon Hill

Focus

Dur­ing your prepa­ra­tion, it’s impor­tant to focus.  Focus on what’s impor­tant to know and do.  Just as Mark dis­cusses in Prepar­ing For Your First Triathlon, focus on those things that you’ll need to do to be suc­cess­ful.  Work on them until you feel good about where you are.  Here, the focus is on what needs to be done.  And no mat­ter what it is you’re prepar­ing for, look at both the men­tal and phys­i­cal realms that will need your focus.

Under­stand

Under­stand what you are prepar­ing for.  Ask your­self the ques­tion “Do I know what it is I’m try­ing to accom­plish?”.  Answer it hon­estly.  If your answer doesn’t make sense, or if it seems out of align­ment with what you see the end result is, then focus more on under­stand­ing the scope of what you’re tack­ling.  Some­times tasks/projects/games can be ambigu­ous.  When you encounter ambi­gu­ity, take the time to under­stand.  Under­stand­ing will then lead back to the focus you need to con­tinue on.

Pace Your­self

Prepa­ra­tion isn’t all about see­ing how fast you can get it all done.  It’s more impor­tant to focus on doing it right.    Pre­pare for suc­cess by pac­ing your­self.  This might mean going over one par­tic­u­lar area many times, in an effort to get it “right”.  That’s okay.  Prep time is exactly for that — for smooth­ing out the rough edges.

Suc­ceed

If you do all the steps above, you are ready for the big “game”.  Suc­cess will be wait­ing for you there.  Remem­ber also that at “game” time, as much as you’ve pre­pared, you may still be faced with some­thing you hadn’t thought of.  That’s okay.  You do the best you can given what you know.  Will you suc­ceed?  That’s a ques­tion only you can answer.  Suc­cess is wait­ing.  As Rupal dis­cusses in Find­ing Suc­cess is a Jour­ney, this is a jour­ney we’re on.  And one worth keep­ing at.

Through it all, remem­ber why it is you’re doing these things you’re doing.  What­ever it is, it should be some­thing you want to do.  Evita, in her arti­cle, Human Doings ver­sus Human Beings, says it so well — about focus­ing on being instead of just doing.

Be Great!

Your moment is now!  Find those things in life that have mean­ing to you.  And as you’re get­ting ready to do these things, pre­pare.  Pre­pare and put it all out there on the table.  No regrets!  This is your life.  Be great!

photo credit: marcel­ger­main

“Don’t be afraid of oppo­si­tion. Remem­ber, a kite rises against, not with the wind.” ~ Hamil­ton Wright Mabie

Have you ever felt like things just aren’t going your way?  Some­times just moments.  Other times, maybe days.

And you have to some­how deal with these moments before your life can move on.

This too, shall pass.

Today, I’ll share a story from this past weekend.

A busy week­end, I knew it would be.  My first year as the direc­tor of the  bas­ket­ball tour­na­ment for our girls bas­ket­ball pro­gram.  A great team of peo­ple had been assem­bled to bring this all together.  And together, it had come.  After sev­eral months of prepa­ra­tion, the tour­na­ment was upon us.  This would involve two days of non-stop bas­ket­ball for girls in 5^th through 8^th grade.  Sixty four teams.  Ninety six games.   Two days.

Every­thing was in place.  Sat­ur­day morn­ing came, and besides some minor sched­ul­ing issues, the day began much like I had hoped.  We were off.  And day one con­tin­ued along smoothly.  Sure, there were minor hic­cups along the way.  Much like life, we can plan every­thing out, yet things come up.  And they did.  All minor, though.  Fif­teen hours after the day had begun, we headed home — weary and exhausted, yet also filled with relief in a day done and successful.

Day two.  The younger grades play­ing — 5^th and 6^th grades.  Fifth grade would be first.  And once again, the day began with minor sched­ul­ing issues, with every­thing else going just as planned.  And I wan­dered between the four courts of bas­ket­ball going on, I checked in with our vol­un­teers, I met with our ref­er­ees.  And then, there I was, meet­ing with our vol­un­teer coör­di­na­tor (my wife) when it happened.

A coach came rush­ing out of one of the gym doors.  By the look, it was obvi­ous some­thing was wrong.  He quickly approached me, and I could eas­ily sense his ten­sion ris­ing.  The ref­eree had ejected him from the game.  For rais­ing his arms.  And girls were get­ting hurt on the floor.  (Note:  I’m not here to pass judg­ment on who was right or wrong in this case)

I quickly went into the gym.  The game was stopped.  Coaches from both teams were out on the floor.  The two referee’s were on the floor.  The whole sit­u­a­tion felt volatile and laced with ten­sion.  I approached the ref­eree.  He was vis­i­bly upset.  I had already heard the coach’s side of the story.  Now I was privy to the referee’s side of the story.  Not all that dif­fer­ent, the two sto­ries were.  In fact, the only real dif­fer­ence was whether or not the girls get­ting hurt was inad­ver­tent or whether it was the result of a foul.  And we have no instant replay…

And this all leads up to…

The ref­eree asked me to address the crowd of the team who had two play­ers leave the game because of injuries (and the team whose coach had been ejected).  My task:  explain the rules, as the ref­eree had called them, so there was no ques­tion as to who was get­ting the ball, and why this had hap­pened.  Being this was the par­ents to the team with the ejected coach, and because these par­ents were already upset with the offi­ci­at­ing — the ref­eree felt it best if I addressed the par­ents.  There was a group of maybe 30–40 peo­ple in the stands.  This shouldn’t be too bad, right?  Just explain the rules, and move on.

Wrong.

As I began to address the crowd, I quickly real­ized the emo­tional state of the whole crowd.  These were their kids out there.  And they all believed the game was get­ting out of con­trol.  (I have no basis for whether it was or not)  As soon as I spoke to them — I was ver­bally “beaten up”.  Yelling.  Scream­ing.  Gnash­ing of teeth.  Fin­ger point­ing.  Looks of dis­gust.  I spent a cou­ple of min­utes attempt­ing to both explain the rules, and to calm the crowd down (it seemed like an hour).  At which point, the game began again, and I licked my wounds and moved off to the side.  I had tried to remain calm, under con­trol, and neu­tral through­out it all.  Did I?  I think so, although I don’t really know for sure, it all hap­pened so fast.

I stayed to observe the rest of the game.  It all went off with­out prob­lem.  After the game, I spoke with peo­ple from both sides — in a fur­ther attempt to assess what had occurred.

The point here being that some­times you’re going to be thrust into sit­u­a­tions that chal­lenge you.   I was pulled into this game, not know­ing what I was get­ting into.  And when I addressed the crowd of peo­ple, I also did not know what to expect.  And I was beaten up.  Ver­bally.  And the truth is, that’s going to hap­pen in life.  Not every moment is going to be rosy.  There will be moments when life beats you up.  When, out of the blue, you’re thrust into a sit­u­a­tion that chal­lenges you at many levels.

Adver­sity.

How do you deal with those moments in your life when things aren’t exactly as you’d like them to be?   What do you do when some adverse sit­u­a­tion presents itself?  Remem­ber that you always have a choice.  You have the choice in how to respond.  How will you?