When my youngest son, Charlie, was in 8th grade, he was getting ready for a school basketball game. Just before the game, Charlie told me that his team was going to lose tonight. The team that they were playing tonight, is the one that slaughtered the team, that beat Charlie’s team last week.
His entire team already knew they were defeated.
In the final seconds of the first half of the game, they were losing 15 to 30. As the clock ticks down to half-time, Charlie is standing at midcourt. His buddy gets a rebound and passes the ball to him. Charlie catches it, spins, and shoots. A silence comes over the stadium as the ball sails through the air. It swishes through the net as the buzzer sounds, 3 points from midcourt. The crowd erupts in cheers.
Charlie “high fives” the player that fed him the shot, and his teammates carry him off the court for half time. They were pumped.
Now, they believed in miracles. They came back out for the second half and dominated. They won the game by 15 points. Why? Because they knew they could. They believed, and the other team started doubting themselves.
Both teams changed their mindsets and their beliefs. That changed the outcome. Charlie’s team did Believe, and they did Succeed.
I have a formula I have written that is called “Believe to Succeed”. It is summed up in this quote from an unknown author, “you can not fail….unless you quit”; or to look at it in another way, “the second that you stop trying, when you quit, your chances of success have dropped to zero”.
Dick Woodhull
CoachingwithCaptainDick@gmail.com