When opportunity comes it is too late to prepare. John Wooden

John Wooden was known for his ability to prepare his teams to win. He coached and taught his players every little detail of how to win on the basketball and in life.

My favorite example is from Bill Walton who once told the story of “coach” going so far as telling and showing the players the proper way to put on their socks.

Coach Wooden took preparation seriously, and it showed. Before UCLA’s breakout onto the national stage and their break through into becoming the best college basketball program for an extended period of time, Coach Wooden prepared. And prepared. And prepared.

He worked on building the right kind of program for over 10 years before seeing the fruits of his labor.

What kind of opportunity are you looking for?

What kind of person do you need to make the most of that opportunity?

What kind of preparation can you do to prepare to make the most of that opportunity?

We will all be presented with opportunity. In fact, we are all presented with opportunity every day.

Are you prepared for it?

Make it a great day.

Jake

RISK IS FREEDOM
To laugh is to run the risk of looking foolish;
To cry is to take the risk of being sentimental;
Getting close to another person is to risk being compromised; To show emotion is to risk being known;
To present to people your ideas and dreams is to put them at risk; To love is to risk not being reciprocated;
To live is to risk dying.

If you allow yourself hope, you run the risk of becoming desperate. In any attempt to perform, there is the risk of failing.
But risks have to be taken,
Because the greatest danger in life is not to risk anything.

He who never takes risks, does nothing, has nothing, and is nothing.

Maybe he can save himself suffering and pain, but he can’t learn, Or feel, or change, or grow, or love or live.
Chained by certainty, he will be a slave; he will sacrifice being free. Only by taking risks do you consecrate freedom.

Author Unknown

Where do you need to take a little more risk in your life?

Most of us grew up thinking that risk is bad and it should be avoided.

This is another area of our lives where we must seek and build wisdom. The wisdom to know when and how to risk.

Make it a great day by taking some risk today.

Jake

As the Olympics move to the track, it reminds me of one of my favorite success stories.

Roger Bannister and the 4 minute mile.

I found this great summary and inspirational thoughts:

I have been on a one-man crusade over the past few months – in my writing, in my public speaking, in my day-to-day encounters with colleagues – to summon a can-do spirit in these can’t-do times. Everything seems hard, from rescuing the financial system to keeping a job to just walking outside in this brutal winter on both sides of the Atlantic.

So how do I persuade people to stay positive in such a negative environment? Increasingly, I tell them the story of the legendary British runner (and gifted neurologist) Sir Roger Bannister, and his quest to run the four-minute mile. It is the right story for these difficult times, a story that reminds us it is possible to do what others say is impossible.

We all know that Bannister (who turns 80 next month) became the first person to run a mile in less than four minutes. It was in a race in Oxford on 6 May 1954. He ran it in three minutes 59.4 seconds. Bannister was a 25-year-old full-time medical student who devised his own approach to training. He was, dare I say, something of a maverick – both in terms of what made him tick and in his approach to competition.

The quest to break four minutes had been in full force since at least 1886 and it involved the most brilliant coaches and the most gifted athletes in North America, Europe and Australia. It was truly the Holy Grail of athletic achievement – for 70 years it didn’t happen, and when it did, the event defied all the experts.

Those experts believed they knew the precise circumstances under which the record would be broken. It would have to be in perfect weather; 20C and no wind; on a particular kind of track – hard, dry clay; and in front of a huge crowd urging the runner on. But Bannister achieved it on a cold day, on a wet track, at a meeting in Oxford before a crowd of only 3,000 people. He broke the mark and even his most ardent rivals breathed a sigh of relief. And once they saw it could be done, they did it too.

Only 46 days later, John Landy, an Australian runner, not only broke the barrier but crushed Bannister’s time. Then, a year after Bannister’s “impossible” achievement, three runners broke the four-minute barrier in a single race.

What goes for runners goes for leaders running organisations and for all of us leading our own lives. Progress doesn’t move in a straight line. It’s not incremental. Whether it’s an entrepreneur, a scientist, or an athlete, someone does something that is thought to be impossible, and what was unreachable becomes merely a benchmark, something for others to shoot for and surpass.

Professor Jerry Wind of the Wharton School has written about the symbolism for business and entrepreneurship of the four-minute mile. In his book, The Power of Impossible Thinking, he offered this assessment of Bannister’s feat: “The runners of the past had been held back by a mindset that said they could not surpass the four-minute mile. When that limit was broken, the others saw that they could do something they had previously thought impossible.”

Today, we all are poised on the track, doubting that we can run and win the race when the odds seem so steep. My advice is to put yourself in Bannister’s shoes: set your own personal four-minute mile, whether it’s starting a company or changing career. Then decide what you are prepared to do to achieve it – and fire the starting gun for the rest of us to run our own race .

By Bill Taylor

Make it a great day.

Jake

Yesterday’s sermon at church was about how we are all created differently and because of those differences the world is a better and more beautiful place to be.

We all have our own version of success that is unique to the person we were created to be.

I know you have all heard this from me before but I realized one little extra tidbit yesterday during the sermon.

We have already won. The world is already a beautiful place just because we are in it.

That certainly takes the pressure off a little now, doesn’t it?

The world is already a great place, we just need to do our best to make it even better. We need to become the best version of ourselves in order to make this great place shine a little more.

What a great thought. We are just adding icing to the cake.

And who doesn’t like icing?

Make it a great day.

Jake

Arlin Sorenson’s (he started HTG, the peer group Mavidea belongs to) father recently passed away. Yesterday he emailed HTG with some of the lessons he learned from dad.

I am sharing them below with all of you.

If your dad is still around, call him today and get some more of that dad wisdom while you have a chance.

Make it a great day.

Jake

Lessons Learned From Dad

So what did I learn from Dad? Well it was a long list, but here are some of the key areas where he changed my life:

1. Faith – this was foundational. It wasn’t negotiable. Church was required. His life led us to come to the Savior by the example he set. His number one focus was making sure we knew the Lord and had eternity covered.

2. Legacy – looking forward was how he lived. Not just a little ways, but way down the road. BHAG (Big Hairy Audacious Goal) was his friend. He always had his eyes set on the next big thing he wanted to accomplish.

3. Planning – he was a planner. He didn’t do things until he knew what that meant. It wasn’t always completely detailed and spelled out, but he knew enough of the path to move forward and followed the plan until he achieved the goal.

4. Worry – just don’t. People aren’t thinking what you think they are, and even if they are, who cares. He told me thousands of times ‘you can’t start swimming til you get to the water’ so stop worrying about what might be and deal with what is.

5. Do it right – he was a stickler for doing things right the first time. ‘If you can’t afford to do it right, you shouldn’t do it at all’. And ‘if you don’t have time to do it right, when will you find time to do it over?’ Words I didn’t always appreciate but have learned are very true.

6. Perfection – doesn’t exist and is seldom needed. Good enough usually works. We didn’t have to have the best of things, just things that did what was needed. It is far more important to take action and do something than sit around and wait for perfection while doing nothing.

7. Hard work – ‘the early bird gets the worm, and those who work are those who eat’. I got some of my workaholic traits from him, but I now appreciate the power of work ethic and putting full effort into getting a job done. I wasn’t always a fan of working, but it has served me very well.

8. Risk – ‘even a turtle has to stick his neck out to get anywhere’. There must be investment before there is any return. So if you want to grow, you have to risk. It needs to be measured and never taken to the point failure will kill you, but you can’t be afraid to take some chances.

9. Family – ‘you can pick your friends, but you don’t get to pick your family’. Make the best of it and work to make it a wonderful thing. God put you where you are for a reason. It won’t always be easy, but it is where you are so make it a great experience.

10. Marriage – get over yourself. Marriage is not about “I.” Your job as husband is to love and lead, not lord and lash. Marriage is for life; there are no options. ‘Til death do us part means exactly that. What God has joined together, no one should ever change. Covenant marriage is forever.

11. Kids – the greatest blessing we experience as parents is the birth of a child. Spare the rod though, and we spoil the child. Spanking is not fatal; it is necessary. Kids need to learn to work and be responsible. There may be time to goof off tomorrow, or after the work is done, but play comes after we work first.

12. Time – it is our most precious commodity and something we have to use wisely. The best time is the time early in the day, before you get up, because that is time you can add to your day and accomplish more. Wasting time is a sin. ‘There is ALWAYS enough time to do the things that are important’. ‘We can ALWAYS make time to do what matters’. Anything else is an excuse.

13. Living – we always took time to have some fun and live life. Every year dad made sure took a family vacation. Didn’t matter if we could afford it, or had time for it, we did it. It was a priority and we saw a lot of the country together as a family.

14. Love – not so much an outer expression but rather a way of living. He wasn’t much of a hugger, or pat on the back kind of guy. But he was always there and always had our back. He loved us with the love of a father – tough love when we acted up – but gentle love when we needed it.

15. People – at the end of the day, life is all about people. There is nothing more important, nothing more worthy of investing in, nothing that should consume us more than building relationships and pouring ourselves into the people in our patch.

“There are none who are as deaf as those that don’t want to hear.”

This one doesn’t need much explanation from my part.

What are you being deaf to in your life?

Are you not hearing when it comes to your weight?

Are you not hearing when it comes to your finances?

Are you not hearing when it comes to an important relationship?

If we take a look in the mirror I am sure we can find at least one area where we have become the person who doesn’t want to hear.

Make a commitment to listen. Make a commitment to paying attention.

And make it a great day.

Jake

I recently heard a speaker say “an acorn can only grow up to be an oak tree”.

Maybe I am just easily impressed but the idea that an acorn becomes an oak tree is nothing short of miraculous to me.

Think about a big, giant oak tree that is decades old. And then think about the comparatively tiny, little acorns it drops every year.

Inside each acorn is the potential for the grand old trees that we see.

And inside each of us is the potential for greatness. Our own unique version of greatness.

Just as an acorn can’t become a pine tree, you also can’t become something you weren’t meant to be.

One of the most difficult parts of our life journey is to find our direction. To set our sail. To find our true north.

Have you found yours?

Do you know what kind of acorn you are?

Make it a great day.

Jake

Action is the antidote to despair. Joan Baez

Taking a step forward is sometimes all it takes to get out of a slump.

Taking a positive step will change your attitude and give you the momentum needed to take that second step.

Despair can’t survive positive action.

And you don’t have pull off some long sequence of perfectly timed and executed action steps. You can start with one small step. One kind word. One positive book.

And before you know it, you will be off.

Make it a great day.

Jake