Radically Redefining Success
by Phil Cousineau
According to H. A. Harris, the ancient Olympic Games were "an
integrated preparation for a life of quality." This transcendent form
of training for success in life, not just in sports, is the secret
strength of our philosopher coaches today, like Susan Jackson, Charles
Riley, Percy Cerutty, and legendary basketball coach John Wooden.
"Players fifty years ago wanted to win just as much as players
today," writes Wooden. "Foot soldiers a thousand years ago wanted to
win the battle as much as combat troops today. Athletes today have no
greater desire to win than athletes at the first Olympic Games. The
desire then and now is the same . . . In classical times, the
courageous struggle for a noble cause was considered success in itself.
Sadly, that ideal has been forgotten. But it is well worth remembering."
According to the dictionary, success means "a favorable or desired
outcome." In common usage it refers to the attainment of wealth or
tame, and in the sporting world, to winning — and winning large, as they
say today, meaning championships. By any standard, John Wooden was one
of the most successful coaches of the twentieth century, having led his
UCLA basketball team to ten national championships in twelve years.
More impressive, however, is that his eye was always on the greater
prize. Winning was never as important to him as the challenge of
instilling in his players a revolutionary -- for our time -- reappraisal of
success and a soulful emphasis on doing one's absolute best.
Coach Wooden bases his famous approach on the simple principles he
inherited from his father, growing up as a boy on a small Indiana farm.
First on the list was: "Be true to yourself." Second was: "Help
others." His commonsense philosophy made him seem unfashionable in his
early years as a teacher and coach, but it set the stage for the
stellar career that followed.
In his 1984 videotape, Pyramid of Success, Wooden says, "Long ago I
wasn't satisfied with what was generally considered to be success,
which was the accumulation of material possessions or the attainment of
a position of power or prestige. I don't think those things necessarily
indicate success, but they might. So after a lot of thinking, I came up
with my own definition." His belief and his practice point to what he
feels is vital to living a good life: "a higher standard of success
than merely winning." This standard is a blend of common sense, old
world values, and a dash of what one of his star pupils, Kareem
Abdul-Jabbar, calls Wooden's "mystic quality."
"Success," says John Wooden, "is peace of mind attained only through
self-satisfaction in knowing you've made the effort to do the best of
which you're capable." With characteristic honesty, Wooden confesses
that when people ask him if he has lived up to his own model of the
Pyramid of Success, "My answer is always the same: No. But I've tried."
Wooden's coaching philosophy is in line with the wisdom voiced by a
plethora of thinkers throughout history. Ralph Waldo Emerson, for
instance, said, "Wisdom comes more from the heart than from the head."
William Faulkner advised, "Don't bother to be better than your
contemporaries or predecessors. Try to be better than yourself." Wooden
often echoed him in telling his players, "Never try to be better than
anyone else, but be the best you can be.
The depth of Coach Wooden's conviction about taking pride in one's
own personal best causes him to worry about the modern Olympics. "I no
longer feel that supportive of the Olympic Games, which have become
almost professional," he writes in his recent book, Wooden. "You'll see
an athlete complaining about coming in second because he knows it will
cost him in endorsements. Going for the gold has too often become going
for the green." Instead, Wooden says, the right question in sports, as
in life, is: "Did I make my best effort? That's what matters. The rest
of it just gets in the way."
FROM JOYLESS PLAY TO FAIR PLAY
David C. Young writes, "The fundamental Greek view of the aim
of athletics was to gain the satisfaction of victory and a sense of
physical well-being in return for hardship, exhaustion, and discomfort."
No doubt, the satisfaction and pride of victory can inspire the
virtues of hard work. A healthy winning attitude can help prepare
athletes, and even fans, to deal with the tough realities of the
ultracompetitive modern world. A ferocious drive to win may also work
as a safety valve for young people's aggressive behavior. But what
happens when the stress on winning transmogrifies into the monstrous
demand to win at all costs?
In The Sports Medicine Book, Gabe Mirkin reports that he polled over
one hundred elite runners about whether or not they would take a magic
elixir he called the "Olympic Pill," if they knew it would transform
them into Olympic champions — even though they would die a year later.
More than half said yes.
Likewise, in Michael Clarkson's Competitive Fire, sports advisor
John Douillard says, "Second place means nothing these days, especially
with so much riding on victory — trophies, earnings, corporate sponsors,
and self-esteem. We've put so much pressure on winning, we've traded in
the process of getting there, the enjoyment process of sports which
many athletes these days never achieve. The fun has gone out of it."
Gary Walton explains the source of the gale-force winds of commerce
and cynicism that a well-meaning coach is up against: "The special
virtues and characteristics of the philosopher coach are being
smothered by the new, additional talents needed to win and promote the
game. No one is to blame. It is not the fault of the coaches, nor the
players, team owners, or fans. The changing character of coaching is
being driven by the market place, by the growing number of fans willing
and able to pay top dollar for sports entertainment, by technical
progress in the development of athletes, and by the media."
When the Olympic ideal of struggling and participation is defamed,
the addiction to perfection can take over. Its influence ripples out
across the entire culture, as evidenced by the disturbing disclosure
that more and more kids are dropping out of organized sports. At least
75 percent of kids stop playing by age twelve, according to Scott
Lancaster in his revolutionary book, Fair Play. And the reasons range
from boredom to shame to too little playing time, poor teaching, not
enough learning or improving, too much focus on winning, and hardly any
joy.
Fair enough, says the "fair play" movement. In the beginning, we
will encourage kids to play for the sake of play and no more. No score,
no points, and no winners. In real play, we will remind them, there is
no goal and no prize.
So far, the fair play model seems to be working. Coaches and parents
across the country report growing enthusiasm for participation in
sports among school-age kids. Nevertheless, there is another level of
engagement in sports that leads inexorably to higher forms of
competition, to games where the only object is to win, to conquer, to
gain advantage.
Many modern coaches believe there is a connection between the
terrific pressure to win at the most elite levels, from the major
leagues to the Olympics, and the joyless and businesslike approach that
now pervades our sports. Those who care about the current and future
health of all of our games, culminating in the Olympics, do not deny
the value of competition, nor do they wish to suppress the joy that
accompanies victory. Instead, they ask for a more mythopoetic approach
to sports — less talk about money and more talk about beauty, less
obsession about celebrities and more focus on sportsmanship,
excellence, humility, and the spirit-lifting power of personal bests.
This caliber of coach speaks up for, and stands for, qualities that
allow the entire community to grow stronger.
One such coach is Steve Glass, former player in the Atlanta Braves
organization and now athletic director and award-winning teacher and
coach at Cathedral School for Boys in San Francisco. Coach Glass told
me in a recent interview that his philosophy is to teach his kids how
to compete and win with perspective, especially in light of the often
unrealistic expectations thrust upon them.
"I see my role as coach as going behind the x's and o's," he told
me, "to teach them life lessons, like developing good qualities as human beings, such as trust, honesty, sportsmanship, and integrity.
These characteristics are much more important than the outcome of one
random game. As long as my students are having fun, giving their best
effort, and never giving up, they are winners no matter the outcome. If
they understand that, then I have done my job."
When I asked Glass about the Olympics' influence on him and his
aspiring athletes, his response was impassioned: "The Olympics have
incredible value to me as a teacher and a coach," he said. "Sports
teach kids the value of making friends, how to deal effectively with
adversity, the importance of getting along with teammates, fundamental
skills, and a healthy lifestyle. Olympic athletes are incredible role
models for kids in terms of their commitment, hard work, and
dedication. They provide a kind of ideal to offer them that I just
can't find anywhere else, in college or pro sports. The Olympic ideal
was founded on a belief that countries could come together in the
spirit of competition; the outcome would be secondary ... No matter
their country, every kid in the world can appreciate an outstanding
athletic performance, and the Olympics provide the grandest stage."
Our inspiring interview transported me back to the playing days of
my own youth, when the gods graced me with coaches who were both wise
teachers and tough trainers. They helped me, in the ancient tradition
of the mentor, to "make up my own mind," which meant, in the language
of sports, find my swing, pace myself, groove my shot. I thought of
Coach McCaffrey, my firebrand Irish baseball coach, who told us before
a championship game, "To hell with all that stuff about sports building
character -- it reveals character. Now get your characters out on the
field and win this thing!"
I remembered the humbling words of Ron Gold,
basketball coach for the club team I played for in London in the
mid-seventies, seconds after the buzzer sounded on my finest game of
the season (44 points, 19 rebounds) and our most resounding victory,
over a team from the nearby U.S. Air Force base. At the height of our
euphoria in the post-game huddle, he reminded us of what James
Naismith, the Canadian inventor of basketball, used to tell his
players: "Let us all be able to lose graciously and to win courteously;
to accept criticism as well as praise; and last of all, to appreciate
the attitude of the other fellow at all times." Then he led us across
court to shake hands with our opponents. I vividly remember the strong
emotions that rose up in me and the utter surprise on their faces as we
looked each in the eye and thanked them for a great game.
Olympic lessons abound concerning the ties that bind together
philosopher coaches and their athletes. Of all the fabled
relationships, perhaps the most storied and inspiring is that of Jesse
Owens and his coach, an Irishman named Charles Riley. Riley was so
convinced he had detected something special in Owens that he rose every
morning at dawn to train him before they both had to appear at school.
Rather than training hard to reach what Owens thought what his limit,
Riley taught him to push past that border to the mysterious place where
victory is always found. What Owens learned to appreciate in his coach
was that, "Somehow, Mr. Riley had found the secret of winning that
victory anew for himself each day, and for helping others to win it."
Owens credits his own ability to transcend the terrific pressure he was
under at the Berlin Games to his beloved coach, for Riley had taught
him well that he wasn't competing against any other athlete or even
against another nation.
"As I'd learned long ago from Charles Riley," he wrote later, "the only victory that counts is the one over yourself."
Owens learned something else from his coach, as the film version of
his life portrays — something that comes not from running but from
slowing down to a saunter and listening. "If we walk long enough,"
Riley says to Owens in the movie, "and talk long enough, we might get
to understand one another."
RECLAIMING THE GAMES
Every two years, I marvel as thousands of athletes gather to
compete at the next round of the summer or winter Olympic Games. My
mind still runs wild, my heart races, and I feel nearly as exultant and
free as I did when I ran a hundred miles a week, or played basketball
five hours a day. I have come to see the four sides of the television,
the four edges of the newspaper, or the four walls of the stadium,
which simultaneously encapsulate and convey to me the action of the
Games, as the ancient Persians viewed their walled gardens, their
pairidaeza — as "paradise." For it is in paradise that we finally return
home. It is there that we catch a glimpse of our better selves; it is
there that our spirits finally roam free.
I believe this is one reason why the Olympic Games remain as
relevant as ever: they continue to carry us away from our daily
troubles and transport us to the closed garden of the gods. As A. Bart
Giamatti writes in his inspired essay on our glorious love of all great
games:
All play aspires to the condition of paradise. It is the condition
of freedom that paradise signals, and that play or sport — however hedged
in by the world wishes to mirror, however fleetingly... So games,
contests, sports reiterate the purpose of freedom every time they are
enacted, the purpose being to show how to be free and to be complete
and connected, unimpeded and integrated, all at once. That is the role
of leisure, and if leisure were a god, rather than Aristotle's version
of the highest human state, sport would be a constant reminder not a
faded remnant of that transcendent or sacred being... As our forebears
did, we remind ourselves through sport of what, here on earth, is our
noblest hope. Through sport, we re-create our daily portion of freedom,
in public.
The Olympic Games teach us that life can be a festival, that
competitions can enliven the entire community, that the desire to excel
makes winners of us all, and that playing at the meaning of life is a
noble thing. To convey the spirit of the ancient Games and the soul of
the modern Games to the next generation is now our hope; to pass the
torch of our passion for a life of excellence is now our task.
This article was excerpted from:
 The Olympic Odyssey: Rekindling the True Spirit of the Great Games
by Phil Cousineau.
Reprinted with permission of the publisher, The Theosophical Publishing House. ©2003. www.questbooks.net
Info/Order this book.
About the Author
PHIL COUSINEAU, author of seventeen books, is an award-winning
documentary filmmaker who lectures worldwide on topics such as
mythology and creativity. He now lives in San Francisco, but still
roots for his Detroit hometown teams.
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