Breakthrough

"Who had I become? Just another shark in a suit? Two nights later at a conference in Miami I had a breakdown. Breakdown? Breakthrough."

- taken from the movie Jerry Maguire

Back when I was playing college tennis our coach had a gentleman by the name of Scott Williams come talk to the team at the beginning of our season. After a brief introduction where we learned that Scott was the captain of an Eco Challenge team based out of San Francisco, he put in a video of the last race he and his team competed in--which showed all individuals doing all sorts of crazy things in extreme physical conditions.

After the video was over, he asked the entire team "How many of you have ever quit?" The room was silent. "C'mon. Hold up your hand if you have ever quit." Hands started being raised, including Scott's and our coach's, and quickly after everyone in the room had their hand up. "And how did quitting make you feel afterwards?" Again, the room was silent. "I'll bet you didn't feel to good after you quit, right?" Everyone in the room was nodding. We were all quiet, but the guy had us. "Looking back on the situation, I bet that if you would have dug in a little bit deeper--not that deep even--and just hang in there, you would have been able to finish."

I don't remember word for word what he said after that--I was so awe struck by his last line that my ability to remember the details was shut down. Scott went on to say that as captain of his Eco Challenge team, he would not allow any of his teammates to quit a race. If any of them approached him during a race and said, "I want to quit," he would then give them the canned response of, "I know you want to quit, but you are not going to." He then quickly organize his team and figure out a way to finish as a team.

After my swim lesson this past Tuesday I was seriously contemplating quitting swimming. I was tired of the nagging shoulder problems, the limited volume that swim due to these injuries, and my lack of progress over the past year. Then I reflected on the aforementioned talk that I heard as a sophomore in college, and recognized that if I did quit how it would make me feel and the need to dig in just a little bit deeper.

I went up to my room, looked at my stroke in the mirror, downloaded some tape of Michael Phelps swimming, and started to reimagine the stroke--all the while taking notes feverishly as to where the breakdown in my stroke was most likely occurring. Prior to getting in the water with Coach Kevin this evening, we discussed some of the possibilities and issues that I had identified and we able to quickly identify where my stroke was breaking down and what has been causing my ongoing shoulder pain. It was the breakthrough moment I had been working towards for the past two years. If I hadn't dug in that extra little bit that breakthrough moment would never have occurred.

Earlier this week I received an email from a good friend of mine who is knee deep in starting his own company. He's lucky in the sense that he has a mentor who is a certified billionaire who is coaching him through this process. My friend had two comments regarding the coaching from this gentleman: (1) The most important thing that he has received is encouragement from someone who has been wildly successful in the business world. Nobody can tell you how to run YOUR company, but encouragment and some direction along the way is priceless. (2) Success is mostly about negotiating and minimizing your failures. It seems that if a person can do this, learn from their failures as they go, and stay in the game long enough, then success is the natural by product of such efforts.

Namaste