.jpg) It's About Process Not Outcomes or What Football Taught Me
Two of the greatest life lessons I ever learned believe it or not came early in my amateur football coaching career. They were to have a profound effect on my philosophy of life thereafter.
So, if you can bear with me and allow my propensity to perhaps over-romanticize my 25 years as a football coach, I promise there is a lesson(s) here. You don't even have to like the sport.
To be perfectly honest, when I first started out as a football coach, I thought that it was all about me and that my worth as a coach and upon reflection perhaps even as a man would be measured by the number of games I won versus the number lost. Yes, how I defined myself back then came down to my win-loss record. A pretty narrow definition of what constitutes a self-accepting man, not to mention its complete lack of consideration for the needs of the players.
For a while I just didn't get it and it went on this way for the first few years that I coached. And although the end of those early seasons brought some success and satisfaction, I was always left with this empty feeling and the thought that there was something missing from my coaching, but what was it?
I am not exactly sure how it happened but the fact that it did is what really matters most. When the light finally came on, let's say one dark and stormy winter night in the off-season, I realized that coaching had little to do with me and everything to do with the boys. Most importantly, I learned that my purpose for being there was to use football as a vehicle to grow young men. It was about focusing my efforts to guide and support my players in becoming the very best that they could be as individual players within a team environment. And a part of that was about instilling in them the kind of values and way of operating that would carry them well beyond their football playing days. It of course made perfect sense and I kicked myself for not comprehending this simple but profound truth sooner. I shook my head in disbelief for having bought into the societal norm that to often judges our worth by our wins and losses.
When I began to think about how to translate and action this with the boys, it occurred to me that if it was not about winning as an outcome than what it must be about is process, the process of growing through experience and education, in fact a journey and not a destination.
When you think about it, isn't life really about the journey. How often upon reflection do you remember the awards, the trophies or the collection of souvenirs? In fact, it's those same trophies or souvenirs that remind you of the experiences that happened around them along the way. Those are the memories that endure, and those are the accumulated life events that remind us all that it is the process of living that defines our lives.
As previously stated, these two life lessons have
become a part of my philosophy of life and of course an essential part
of the way I approach my personal coaching. You can bet that when I am with my clients we are all about process, calling upon their previous life experiences to understand how they came to this place in time and creating new and meaningful experiences to add to their journey and shape a future that creates the greatest possibility for them to become the very best that they can be in the four dimensions of self and life.
As an afterthought and the irony in all this, when I applied this philosophy to my work as a football coach, with its emphasis on process and the journey, one unanticipated outcome of my actions was winning on the field.
I am grateful for the experience of football and what it along with the boys taught me about how to live my life. It has served me well ever since. If there was but one regret though, reflecting back on my years in football, it was the damage that I might have inflicted on those boys who played for my early football teams as I struggled to find my way as a coach and as it turns out in LIFE.
My thanks to all of them and for our journey together.
Coach Ladd
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