I love using sports analogies to discuss business topics and success lessons. Let’s be honest, I’m a sports nerd and when I can combine business, personal development and sports I truly am in heaven.
It’s funny cause Jon Gordon does this a lot as well in his books and speeches. He’s a much more successful ‘me’ in the case that he loves God, business, personal development and….Sports.
Lots and lots of sports.
His books such as Hard Hat and Training Camp both had sports parables as the core theme and he even co-wrote a book with Mike Smith the ex-coach of the Atlanta Falcons.
So while I was digging into the Power of Positive Leadership, a nugget started to appear when he was discussing ‘rookies’ in sports.
In chapter 5, Jon talked about ‘thinking like a rookie’. How rookies don’t bear the burden of history. They start fresh. They keep taking swings until something connects. It got me thinking about the 2016 Chicago Cubs…
Oh yeah! I’m about to get really ‘sports nerdy’ now…
In 2016 the longest winless streak in professional sports ended. The Chicago Cubs hadn’t won a championship since 1908. Yeah that’s over 100 years if you are counting But it all ended on November 2nd 2016.
Talk about relief right?
Now how did they do it?
If you know the history of this team, you’ll know they have the most loyal fans around but have been losing year after year since 1908.
My thought is this….The younger players did not listen to the ‘history books’.
They weren’t filled with yesterday’s thoughts, they were focused on the future. Not only that, because of their ‘rookie attitutde’ they keep swinging. They keep battling. They had nothing but success on their minds and didn’t care what the history books said. They were the Cubs, history said THEY HAD TO FAIL.
But they didn’t….
And what does that teach all of us about success?
To me….It’s about staying up to bat. Sure you might swing and miss a few times but if you forget about yesterdays losses, and grow from them, you will come out on top.
You may have everyone in the world telling you that you will fail, but you know better. You aren’t limited by what others SAY you should and can accomplish, you are too busy taking swings.
Every day! Plus 1….
The funny thing is, I’m not even a Cubs fan. But I respect the hustle. I love when others succeed and seeing this team win after over a century of futility, made me smile.
We can learn a lot from watching ‘rookies’ play the game. They make mistakes. They might even drive the managers crazy. But they keep swinging. Their history will be written by what they do today and not what happened in the past.
It’s a cool way to live life huh 🙂
Hi, Jon, this is a great comparison to business! I’m not a baseball fan but really enjoyed reading your post. It’s so important not to focus on how your fail, but look ahead and think of how you can win or succeed. It will help your attitude as well to look ahead in a positive direction. 🙂
Thanks Barb, yup it’s pretty cool to see the real world business examples we can find in every day things like sports.