W1NNING

By the time you read this, my two-hour Monday presentation to a dozen high school administrators will be over. But at the time of this writing, thoughts of it consume me.

In the world of presentations, this one is not monumental. It’s not like I’m appearing before Congress. It’s just a small passionate workshop for an educational consultation company about effective teaching practices.

A normal person would prep for a few hours, maybe make up some index cards, do a couple of run-throughs. Do their best, and not stress out about it.

It’ll go fine, a normal person would say. Not the end of the world. Take the day off. You work too hard. You’ve already won, just by trying. Relax, enjoy. Stop taking everything so seriously.

Here’s to abnormalcy.

According to the book W1NNING by Tim Grover, when an individual strives for excellence in career, his head is always filled with a minefield of ideas and warnings and questions…and winning detonates them all at once.

Whether you are an elite athlete, the CEO of a company, a student who dreams of career success, or even just your average Joe (or Josephine) read W1NNING by Tim Grover. If you are obsessed with succeeding and improving, read it. I only read a few pages of W1NNING at a time, and they course through me like a shot of adrenalin. Grover’s words are so familiar and so powerful in my life, that I ingest them slowly and over time. If you are happy and content in your life, and desire no more than what you already have, Grover’s words will sound manic, and maybe bonkers. But if you want something so bad that the image burns you while you’re asleep, this book is up your alley.

Thoughts of winning keep fighting even when you’re asleep, preparing for the threat of imagined battles that haven’t happened yet. They might happen. They might not.

As the days lead up to the presentation, things that could go wrong fill my head. Much like an athlete who wants to perfect that shot, that move, that stroke, I want this presentation perfect. Seamless. I want it to resonate in my audience’s memory, to permeate their school year. I want them to tell my supervisors that it was the best presentation on teaching practices they have ever attended. That they’d like me to come back, and speak again.

(Note post-presentation: It was not perfect. It was not seamless. It did not resonate. It was not a disaster. It was mediocre. But I learned, man oh man, did I learn what not to do)

Thoughts of the presentation fill my head, even when I sleep. When I wake, I’m still exhausted, and when my eyes pop open, my mind crawls right back to thoughts of that presentation.

You go to bed tired and wake up tired because there’s a raging onslaught of chaos in your head, and there’s no nap that can erase that. The minute you wake up, you’re fighting again. Your mind is so overrun with conflict that you can’t even remember going to sleep (42).

People who see me ask me if I’m far away, because I seem distracted. I am. I’d love to relax, trust me. I try. But as I try to find peace and serenity, instead I am enmeshed in a wild mental war zone with smoke and explosions and screaming. Every time I diffuse a doubt or a fear about the presentation, another approaches.

When I begin to feel confident about tone and approach during my introduction, I begin to stress over research and feedback during group work. When I conquer that, I worry about overall timing and pace.

You’re fighting fires everywhere, and as soon as you extinguish one, another bursts into flames.

Winning loves that battle.

How much can you take? How far can I push you? Are you having fun yet?

Great video to watch:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XVTlpgigdBU

Your mental battlefield is the command center of every decision you make. If you decide something is a problem, then it’s going to be a problem. Before a game or a meeting, you can think of all the ways you could screw up, or you can mentally walk through the details you’ll need to make it all work.

Winning doesn’t visit you in your dreams…it sees you in your nightmares.

Thoughts of doubt are fine, as long as they are a blueprint for improvement. Did I get this right? Can I do better? I know what to do, I need to make that happen. And they move in on those bombs, inspecting them from every angle, until they can extract and defuse them.

Forty-eight hours from now this presentation will be a thing of my past, but that won’t mean it’s over. It will simply be yet another diffused mine on the battlefield of my life that I will learn from, even if it goes as well as I’d like it to. And once it’s over, something else will take its place. A lesson to teach, a meeting to attend, a talk, a workout.

Have I done everything I can?

Winning

Winning

(Warning: Long blog post ahead)

I just read something spectacular. Bear with me to the end.

The last few weeks for me have been WOWZA, a fantastic chain of events. I wish I could relish them for more than a few minutes.

In the movie “Bull Durham,” the character Nuke has a great pitching inning, and heads into the dugout to accept accolades. Crash Davis, however, reminds him about the transitory nature of victory:

NUKE
I was great, eh?

                                 CRASH
                     Your fastball was up and your 
                     curveball was hanging -- in the Show 
                     they woulda ripped you.

                                 NUKE
                     Can't you let me enjoy the moment?

                                 CRASH
                     The moment's over.

It was a great week for me, to be sure. But the moment’s over. Time for a new moment.

A normal person would toast her accomplishments with friends over drinks. Post it on social media with a thumbs-up. Announce it on LinkedIn. Brag to family and friends. Celebrate with a shopping spree, or a spa day.

I’m simply plotting my next move.

It amuses me that people think this blog is revealing. It’s not. No one, and I repeat NO ONE, knows all of my moves, not even my sons. I reveal, in the amount of time that I deem appropriate, what I believe it’s beneficial to reveal. No more, no less.

I like to think of the human life as an iceberg, with eighty-percent of its mass below the surface. And it is below that surface where people really live. And it is below that surface, where it’s cold and dark and very often lonely, where all of my hard work takes place. I’m alone under there, free from distractions to accomplish my goals.

I’m never satisfied. Never. My mantra? “No one cares. Work harder.”

There’s no bragging here. Bragging about one’s inner drive and ambition would be like saying a race car driver is bragging for driving 250 miles an hour. Or that a great white shark is bragging for attacking a steel cage. Or that Aaron Ralston was bragging when he cut his own arm off to survive. Or that a POW is bragging for managing to survive in a POW camp for twelve years.

The point is simply speed. Hunger. Aggression. The insatiable desire for survival. That race car driver is alone in that car. The shark, alone. Aaron Ralston, alone, a POW, alone. Alone, alone, alone, all doing what they need for survival.

It never ends, the search for winning. I achieve a degree, and I’m immediately looking for another program. I get published, and I’m pitching the next article. I finish a speaking gig, and I’m immediately back in my office, working on another. I get “the job,” and I want the promotion. I get interviewed, but I feel it’s not big enough. I have this small website, but I want it more sophisticated, more polished, with better sponsors, better affiliates, better advertisers. I don’t just want it better.

I want it the best. And it will be the best.

I have always been like this. I can compare it to eating a huge meal and leaning back satisfied, but ten minutes later the fullness wears off and I’m scrounging around for more food. Always voracious, never content.

I just read something that finally explains me to me. The words were like an anvil between my eyes. Like I’ve been living in a foreign country and I have finally met someone who knows how to order off the menu. Enjoy this selection about the hunger, the struggle, and the utterly defeating and exhausting search for that bitch called Winning.

Winning throws a party in your honor, refuses to give you the place and time, and sticks you with the check. It pours your champagne, and knocks over the glass.

Winning puts you on the biggest stage. And shuts off all the lights.

Winning drives you forward. Every time you advance, you can hear the steel bars clank shut behind you; they are real, and they are earned. Now you can’t go back, only ahead. You can’t unlearn what you’ve learned. You can’t unfeel what you’ve felt.

Winning never lies, but it always hides the truth. It tells you everything you want is so close, and then laughs as it slams the door in your face. It tells you all your goals and dreams are impossible, and then taunts you to keep going. One more step. One more step. One more step, to an uncertain destination that might not even be there.

Winning is craziness. It doesn’t sleep, and doesn’t understand why you do.

It refuses to share time or space with others in your life, like a jealous lover who demands all of you and gets it. It’s a driving obsession that looks irrational to others and perfect to you.

Winning is unforgiving. If you screw up, if you lay down, if you show weakness, you’re done. It shows you the best of you, and the worst.

Winning keeps its hands in its pockets, so it doesn’t accidentally point to someone unworthy. It holds you up to the sun. And watches you burn.

If you manage to reach the top, Winning will be there to greet you with open arms. Just before it pushes you off the ledge to make room for someone else.

It’s your ultimate reality check, a scorching reminder of who you really are and who you’re pretending to be, and forcing you to reconcile the difference. Winning is the lover who takes you to paradise all night long, and disappears before morning. It’s the dream you can’t remember when you wake up.

Winning is unapologetic. You can be replaced. You will be replaced.

One minute you see a step in front of you, the next moment it’s quicksand.

Winning doesn’t care if you can walk up the steps- it wants to know what happens when you miss that step, when you can’t see or feel what’s in front of you.

Some days you’ll feel so good you’ll want to sprint, other days you’re crawling on your hands and knees, gasping for breath and wishing you’d never started this race.

Winning requires real talk. Or, even better, no talk at all.

Winning is that incredible riptide of artificial power and passion and ravenous energy…right before it wears off and you’re suddenly face-planted on the hard cold floor wondering what the hell happened.

And when you finally make some progress…more steps to climb. There’s a pebble in your shoe, a blister on every toe. Your lungs want to explode. Every day.

EVERY DAMN DAY.

It’s the road to paradise, and it starts in hell.

Welcome to Winning.

-Tim Grover

The moment's over.