"Mints on the pillow don’t mean a lot if the bed is not made. Focus on the basics first."
Yesterday saw the grand final between the Melbourne Storm and the Penrith Panthers in the National Rugby League Grand Final. The team from Penrith had 17 straight wins and were frothing at the bits to wreak carnage on the team from Victoria whose woes were exacerbated by living away from home for the last five months. For those of you that are familiar with the boys from Melbourne, they do not display fancy footwork, lightning speed runs or any dizzying aerial manoeuvres - they just get the job done, one set of six at a time.
In a calm, clinical way they applied their foot to their opposition’s throat squeezing it systematically to win the first half 22-0. They didn’t do anything fancy: they just ran forward in packs of twos and threes fearlessly, their halves rolled the ball into the goal line, they played the percentages and got through the sets. Repetitive and boring but it is what was needed to make them the NRL grand champions once again. Sure, the opposition did gain ground in the second half but the Storm did well to protect their lead.
Just like winning coach, Craig Bellamy , from the Melbourne Storm, there are many other successful coaches who prove that the recipe for success is getting down to the basics. One in particular, was Vince Lombardi who took on the coaching job in 1961 of the Green Bay Packers football team who suffered an excruciating defeat the previous year in the NFL grand final against the Philadelphia Eagles.
To his bemused team, he started his coaching stint by raising something in the air and said, “This is a football.” He went on to train them taking nothing for granted as if they had no knowledge or experience of the game before. It is mind boggling that he adopted this approach with these professional athletes being blank slates - a team consisting entirely of professional footballers who were almost the champions the previous year!
Despite the teasing and sometimes the frustration of the players, Lombardi started from page 1 of the rule book and practised the basics over and over again. And what do you know - 6 months later his team trounced the New York Giants to win the NFL Championship 37 -0. The team’s secret? They just did the basics better than everyone else - they took nothing for granted.
In life too, we don’t need grand motivational speeches or be armed with the killer instinct to achieve goals. Most often, it is just putting one foot in front of the other and doing the basics well. Like Nike says, we need to “Just do it”. Like the Storm did to raise up the championship silverware - just complete a set of 6 to get to the goal line.
Very often, we look for one big break or a single event to catapult us to fame or to fortune. But really when road meets rubber, it is the fundamentals that determine our individual success: our daily habits, our routines and our little actions which all build up to make the win.
So don’t get bogged down with the details or with intricate game plans - focus on the fundamentals to be that better leader, worker, teacher, student, parent or yourself.
Have a great week, Folks, doing the ordinary things well.
#happynewweek #motivationalmonday #mondaymotivation #backtobasics #fundamentalsfirst
