July 15, 2021

Offseason Talks, Volume 6 – Coach Wooden’s 7 Rules for Life (cont.)

Offseason Talks, Volume 6 – Coach Wooden’s 7 Rules for Life (cont.)

In Episode 38, we continue our Offseason Talks series with our host, Phil Darke, talking about the life and leadership lessons he learned from the seven rules for life that John Wooden learned from his dad and sought to live out during his time on...

In Episode 38, we continue our Offseason Talks series with our host, Phil Darke, talking about the life and leadership lessons he learned from the seven rules for life that John Wooden learned from his dad and sought to live out during his time on Earth. We cover the last 4 of the rules in this episode: 4) Drink deeply from good books, especially the Bible; 5) Make friendship a fine art; 6) Build a shelter against a rainy day; and 7) Pray for guidance and counsel, and give thanks for your blessings each day.

Resources and Links from this Episode

 
Transcript

Phil: [00:00:00] welcome back to how soccer explains leadership. I am Phil Darke. Your host and on behalf of my co-host Paul Jobson, who is out on the recruiting trail. We are very, very grateful for each of you out there who are making this show possible. Really? It's it's it wouldn't make much sense for us to just talk to ourselves and so very, very much, uh, hopeful that you will engage the conversation deeper than simply just listening.

But hopefully you'll also be sending us emails with different thoughts you have phil@howsoccerexplainsleadership.com is my email. And I welcome you to reach out to me with any questions you have with any comments you have any guests that you think we should interview for this show. Very much.

Welcome all of that here. If you want to do any DISC training or coaching the bigger game. Have any questions about the warrior [00:01:00] way that Paul and Marci Jobson are doing, reach out to us. We'd love to share any of that with you and hopefully grow deeper in a friend chips that can just start through you listening to this show.

So I know it's happened before and I have no doubt it will happen again. So hopefully you will be the one who will reach out next and we can connect. So, uh, you know, as we've been going through the last few weeks, Of, these off season talks, if you haven't checked them out already. And this was the first one that you've downloaded, definitely go back and listen to them.

Listen to all the interviews we've done over the last, you know, few months here, been amazing, amazing guests. And we just decided over this summer, as the teams are taking some breaks, obviously Euro 2020 is going on, but the clubs are taking breaks and, We just thought we'd do these things that Paul and I have been thinking about these ideas, these concepts that will hopefully help you in your leadership.

You know, this how soccer explains leadership really is about how the game soccer, football, wherever you are around the world, explains life and [00:02:00] leadership. But we just thought we'd take some time to talk about some of these principles that you need in your life and that, uh, we, we all need in our lives and that, that have really impacted the leadership that Paul and I have in our various capacities as coaches.

Yeah. Parents and husbands and, really leaders of organizations. So without more we're going to get back to it. So last, last week we had a conversation about, John wooden and the first few of his rules for life that he got from his dad, really be true to yourself, make each day a masterpiece, help others.

Those were the three that we covered last week four, that we're going to cover this week, or drink deeply from good books, especially the Bible, make Friendship a fine art, build a shelter against a rainy day. Pray for guidance and counsel and give thanks for your blessings each day. So we're just going to jump right into it.

If you didn't listen to the last. Go back to last week and check it out. So you can hear those first three that I was able to talk about. and this first one we'll talk about today is [00:03:00] drink deeply from good books, especially the Bible. It really speaks for itself, spiritual leadership. One of my favorite books ever written, by Oswald Sanders, Oswald Sanders talks about the fact that we need to choose our books like we choose our friends. There's so much we can choose for out there. So much noise that we could read that we could. Participate in. and you know, this isn't just books now. I think he wrote it at a time where there wasn't there weren't podcasts that weren't audio books there weren't, documentaries and different things at the, at the clip that there are now.

So I would say learn deeply from good resources. At this point, I learn a lot from podcasts. I learn a lot from books and I usually listen to my books, that I'm learning from. I learned from conversations with people, learn from documentaries. I learned some from movies as well. We watched a great movie the other day, 12 mighty orphans, fantastic movie taught so many lessons about life.

So there's lots of things we can be learning from. But the fact of the matter is leaders are learning. And if you, as a coach [00:04:00] in soccer, football, wherever you are around the world, if you're, if you're coaching and you're not learning, you're, you're dying. You're, you're not going to stay up to speed on different things.

You're not going to be able to make those in game, Transitions and changes that you need to make. You're not going to be able to keep up with the, the people that are coming onto your teams and your players and the different coaches. And so you need to continually be learning, not just about the game, but about your people, which is why we talk about DISC, why we talk about these different, opportunities that we have to really be able to study our people.

So if you're not learning your people, if you're not learning about innovation and different things, different ideas that can come across your way. You're, you're not really going to be a great leader. You're not going to be able to lead at the level that you need to be leading. And, uh, John wooden said, if I am through learning, I am.

And I think that's, those are good words to live by. So basically leaders are learners. We need to continually be learning, if we want to be great leaders. [00:05:00] So that's the first one. second one is, make friendship a fine art again. Choose your friends wisely. You've heard it before. I'm sure you are the average of the five people you spend the most time with.

You know, whether this is actually. Absolutely true or not. I've found it is very, very, there's much at least a correlation to it. It may not be causation, but if you're hanging around with the wrong crowd, chances are, you're not going to be making wise decisions. Seeing that with my kids, I've seen that with myself.

If I'm surrounding myself with great people who are going to challenge me to be better, then it's very likely that I'm going to be better. I'm going to be more likely. Moving toward my human flourishing, my level of the best version of myself, I can be with people who care about me. As we've talked about mentors, mentors who actually understand us, who study our, why, who know what we're all about, know where we want to go.

We've shared our goals with them and they're helping us to get there. They're sharpening us challenging us, right? If you're with people who are just letting [00:06:00] you. You know, make bad decisions. They're not challenging you to be better. They're letting you just stay in, in a, uh, you know, a neutral state, basically.

When we're you're stagnant and you don't, you're not pushing yourself to that next level. Well, those aren't people who you should be surrounding yourself with. So choose your friends wisely as a coach, make sure you're choosing your team wisely. As we've talked about viruses over the course of this, this podcast with almost, you know, almost every coach has talked about it.

If we aren't choosing our team wisely, if we aren't. Really making sure that these viruses are either, cut off and pruned or transformed and us to be able to speak truth into their lives so that they can, not be those viruses on the teams and actually become healthy. Then we're going to be setting ourself up for failure.

So surround yourself with good people, choose your friends wisely and. Is so critical, whether it's mentors, whether you're mentoring people, you know, you want to make sure that the people that you're [00:07:00] surrounding yourself or surrounding yourself with will help you to get to be the person that you want to be, and to help you to fulfill your why and your purpose that you have a really developed for yourself.

All right, the next one is build a shelter against a rainy day. Now this one is really prepared for the. Right. Plan for what might come down the pike. Really. If you wait and tell that rainy day to build the shelter, it's too late, you're already drenched. You're not going to be able to build it in the, in that rainy day.

You're not going to be able to build a foundation when it's raining. If you've noticed when people are building houses, they're not able to lay the concrete of the foundation. If it's raining, they have to take off. So if you're waiting to the rainy day, you're either not going to be able to build it at all, or it's going to be built on a shell.

A shady foundation is going to be built on sand. If you, if you know the scripture, it talks about do not build your house on the sand. It will be washed away in the rains, build your house on a rock where it [00:08:00] will stand firm and it will stand for. maybe not forever, but in, in that, in that context, it's obviously forever, but in the context of a house it's, it's, it will withstand those rains.

It will withstand the storms. It will re stand that and that's in our lives the same way we need to, we need to build a shelter, gets ready today. We need to prepare ourselves for those situations that may arise. We need to prepare and build trust for the, in our relationships so that when we have conflict, when we have issues, we have actually.

Built up that trust in our teammates. We have been that leader. In the good times and the times where it wasn't necessarily needed. So that for the times where it was needed and is needed, we are ready. And we have built that trust and we have earned that conversation and we have basically put ourselves in that position to lead when necessary.

I think of, I don't know why it just popped in my head, but Braveheart William Wallace, if he hadn't built a trust. And established himself as that leader, he wouldn't have been able to lead his people into [00:09:00] that battle that they did. It was such a powerful scene. And, you know, I choose to fight or freedom or whatever he's yelling that's actually causing and stoking and inspiring his people because he has earned that conversation.

I think of a couple of weeks ago with Christian Eriksen, going down with a heart attack in the middle of a game. There's so many things could have gone south really fast. It, according to the team doctor, he was actually dead for a minute 46. Well, if his captain on his team had not prepared for a rainy day, had not built a shelter for a rainy day.

And he hadn't taken CPR. He wouldn't have been able to do CPR on that field. If he didn't have the trust of his teammates, he wouldn't have been able to rally them around if they weren't a healthy team, because they put that work into it. They would not have been able to surround him and block from him, inappropriate or improper cameras and paparazzi and all the things that they were doing.

They were a unified front. If you haven't watched that, go watch. Couple minutes where he goes down, that [00:10:00] team rallies, that player who's able to save his teammates life because he prepared. He knew how many of us just go through the motions when we're learning CPR, when we're learning these different things, because we think, oh, we'll never need it.

But what if we did that with rain? What if we did that with these other things where like, oh, we probably won't need it. Well, what happens when that storm hits? What happens when the storms of life hits? Are you prepared? Have you prepared yourself for that? Have you built that shelter? Are you reading the good books?

Are you choosing the right friends? Are you preparing yourself as a leader? Now you may to say, I'm not a leader. Everyone is a leader. We all lead in different ways. It looks different in each of us, but it's something that is absolutely essential for us to understand is, is what does that look like for us to prepare?

For these next things that may happen in, they may never happen. I mean, how many times does that happen, where somebody's gone down with a heart attack? That's a, one-time, I've seen that in a major game, especially, but I've never seen [00:11:00] that anywhere else. I know as a coach, I'm going to take it a lot more serious, these different classes that I'm taking as far as whatever it may be, but you know, if we're not prepared for that, those different things that may come.

We're going to be caught holding the bag and, and we're not going to be able to have, have that leadership in those moments. Again, if you wait for the time that you need to be a leader to establish your leadership and build that trust, it's too late. So start building that trust. Now do the things you need to do now as a leader, study, your players, understand them so that if they go through a crisis, you're ready to help them through it.

You can't really help someone through a crisis if you haven't established that trust. I think of it as I talk about it all the time with fathers. As a dad, you can't just when the kid's 15 and going through issues, come into their life and say, well, now I'm your dad. So I want to have a conversation with you.

If you haven't built that trust over the first 15 years of your child's life, if you hadn't had the conversations, if you haven't loved them, if you haven't showed them that you love [00:12:00] them, no matter what you are, their dad and that they, they know, and they can be secure in the fact that you love them because you're their dad.

That conversation likely won't happen when they're 15. Cause they'll say you haven't earned that conversation. You're only my dad name. So those are things that are so critical for us to remember in those regards. So last one of these seven rules is pray for guidance and counsel and give thanks for your blessings each day.

Really? This is all about humility and gratitude. We don't know everything. Pray for guidance and counsel praise for, I always praying for wisdom and discernment to know the things that I need to be doing to know the purposes for me each day. And remember, I don't know is a great answer. If you don't know.

It'll it'll spark. You hopefully to find the answer, it'll help you to show that you don't know everything because your people that you're leading already [00:13:00] know that you don't know everything, people around, you already know that you don't know everything, but to be able to say, Hey, I don't know, but let's go find the answer together, or I don't know, but I'm going to have go, go to study it.

Or, you know, what, if somebody says something about something and you don't know, you can go, man, that that just really inspires me to go learn about that. Going back to leaders are learners. Rather than just saying, I don't need to know it. Well, you might not need to know it, but if it's something that you should know, go learn it.

Or if it's something that your kid wants you to know, or one of your players wants you to know or wants to know, then you can help them and you can go, um, and be able to find those answers together. Ken Coleman, who's another podcast host always talked about ask great questions and he inspires me. He encourages his kids to do that each night to have them ask him a question.

If he doesn't know the answer, they go look it up in the morning, on him, on the internet together to find the answer. I really love that. Something that I wanted to do. Never did, um, in the context of, of my kids' bedtime rituals, but it's something that we do have that ethic in our home where if we don't know something, we go figure it out.

We go find out. And so that's something that's not humility to [00:14:00] understand that I don't know everything, the humility to understand that, you know, I am given these different gifts to be able to do different things. And it's not about me. It's not about how I can use these things to serve myself. It's how can I serve others, going back to help others and that, all of these things are working together to, if you've noticed these seven rules work.

So praying for guidance and counsel. If you're not learning, if you're not a learner, you're not going to be able to actually be hearing these things when you're learning them. When, when God does give you the wisdom and discernment, are you able to hear it? Do you know that voice? Do you know how to actually understand that these are, this is wisdom?

Do we even know the difference between wisdom and just this noise that the world is feeding us? So these are different things. That we need to be able to discern these different things. And John Maxwell said, you only get answers to the questions you ask. And that's obviously a very simple statement, but it's also very profound, right?

If you're not [00:15:00] asking for wisdom and guidance and counsel from others, you're not going to. So seek out those mentors, seek out people in your life who know you well, to be able to help you in these different things, to be able to encourage you, to be able to give you the wisdom that you need in those different moments.

And then the idea of give thanks for the blessings let's give. Thanks for your blessings. Brad Miller, who was on this show is sports psychologist talked about the fact that 80%, the default mode for us is 80% of our thoughts are negative. And he talks about retraining our brain and resetting and all these different things.

But the studies on gratitude, I think he talked about it even where it's basically, if you just simply write down three things that you're grateful for every day in 60 days or so, you're going to retrain your brain to have a positive outlook on life. It will become coming. And something you obviously need to reinforce.

It's not like you stopped then boom, you're done. But it's simply just three things. If we start writing down three things and I know I've done [00:16:00] this, I say three, three ways that God has showed himself to me today. Obviously that's my worldview. If it's not yours, then just three things you're grateful for.

If you simply do that, it's amazing how many other things you see that you can show gratitude? That you're grateful for. There are so many things in our lives that we have just simply going outside and being able to breathe, seeing a tree, seeing nature, having children, having a home, having that shelter for a rainy day, having food in our pantry.

I mean, the list goes on and on and on and on. Right. But if we don't intentionally seek to point out and seek to notice these things, to be grateful for. We're probably gonna focus on the things we don't have. We're probably going to focus on the negatives because that's just the wiring of our brain. So really that idea of pray for guidance and counsel, have a humble posture give thanks for your blessings [00:17:00] each day, have a grateful posture, and that will change that that alone will change so much in your life.

I encourage you. Just, just try it out, try it out for a few weeks. see what it does for you. If you haven't done that already. So I'm going to end with, with a couple of quotes from John wooden, figure it's appropriate since he is the inspiration for these last couple episodes, but he said, and this is kind of sums up a lot of what we just talked about talent is God-given be humble.

Fame is man given Be grateful. Conceit is self given. Be careful. So again, talent is God-given be humble, famous, man. Given be grateful. Conceit is self given. Be careful that pretty much speaks for itself. So I'm going to go onto this last quote, just really, I want to this to remind you that don't be too hard on yourself as you go through life.

These things are hard. Don't try [00:18:00] to implement them all at one point, but, but also take, you got to have some, take some risks, as we've talked about on this show. The idea is really that most of the great things in life, come on, just the other side of comfortable. And when we're going for those things, if you think about skiing every time I talk about this, I think about skiing.

If you're not falling, you're not trying hard enough. You're not pushing yourself hard enough to get better. And John wooden said something similar. He said, if you're not making mistakes, then you're not doing it. I'm positive that a doer makes mistakes. So hopefully that'll take, that'll give you an encouragement free you up to really try some of these things as a leader to go out and try things that you might not have otherwise tried, encouraged people in ways and go out on a limb to help people, even if it's uncomfortable, even if it's something that you don't want to do at any given time, if you know it's right, you know, it's the next right thing.

That I encourage you to do it. And if you make mistakes and you [00:19:00] stumble and Bumble people are gonna be, be really forgiving. If see, if they see that you have the right heart and you have the right motive in this situation. So that's my encouragement for you today. That's this the last of this off season talk today.

And we'll be back with you next week with some more, things that will help you in your life. That will help you understand how you can be a better parent, a better spouse, a better leader in whatever capacity you're leading in better coach. If you're in the sports world, again, if you want to reach out to me, Phil at how soccer explains leadership.

Very much welcome. Your emails would love to get to know you beyond just talking to you in this podcast. I'd love to talk with you in a conversation. So with all of this, I hope that you take everything that you're learning from this show and using it to really remind you how soccer does explain life and leadership.

Thanks a lot. Have a great week.