The GOAL is Always Bigger than the Role

 

The GOAL is Always Bigger than the Role

The NBA Playoffs is now in full swing at the 'bubble site' in Orlando, Florida and the heat is on. And after the Miami Heat team won Game 1 of its playoff series with the Indiana Pacers, Fil-Am Coach Erik Spoelstra was bombarded by media as to why rookie Kendrick Nunn suddenly is not part of the starting five and seems ‘left in the doghouse’. His curt reply was: ‘The GOAL is always bigger than the ROLE’.

Translated from ‘Spoism’ to layman’s terms, Coach Spo is sending the message that what matters most is the GOAL and not the role cut for you every step of that long winded journey. In that treacherous journey, at various points, you can play that role of a ‘specialist’ and often times, you may have to be like a chameleon who needs to evolve and develop shades of various skills. This is when you need to become versatile and dynamic, attuned to what the moment demands of you.

Let’s face the wall mirror now. What do we do then? Don’t just set your goals. You gotta set lofty goals, lofty enough to push you to the limits till you get squeezed high and dry. Look at the sports world like Michael Phelps of swimming and Usain Bolt of athletics. What keeps them breaking world records? Hey dude, they keep moving the goal post! The last broken world record never stops whetting their appetite.

What keeps them going? It’s getting constantly motivated in life no less. But motivation seems to be a salesman’s favorite coined word. As a layman, how will you keep yourself motivated?

Firstly, you got to be extremely optimistic. Extreme enough but not an optimism that arises from one’s hallucination. That extreme optimism will drive you farther, trust me.

Secondly, remember that old cliché ‘same feathers flock together’. Correlating this to our motivational approach, if you keep company with pessimists, cynics and ‘gloom-monger’ people, you’re dead very soon man, trust me. Keep company with like-minded folks like you, achieving your lofty goal will not be a pipe dream. If you’re a typically optimistic and positive person and you end up in the company of pessimists or cynics, you have a 50-50 probability of making it or failing it.

Two quotable quotes that will grab you by the lapel:

‘BE PICKY ABOUT WHO YOU KEEP AROUND YOU. PERSONALITIES, WORDS, AND TRAITS DO RUB OFF NATURALLY.’‘There is a saying, birds of the same feather flock together…I have seen a combination of fools together clapping for each other’.