“Don’t wait for success to come your way because if you do, it will never happen.”- Coach MackeyWe are not passive participants in our futures. We are active creators.That’s not to say that opportunity and chance don’t play some role. But opportunityis useless if we don’t know what to do with it when it appears. We have to set the intentionto prepare for those opportunities, and that is when we will find success.Thatability to take advantage of opportunities depends on how hard we’ve worked toprepare for them. So the next time someone tells us “good luck,” we should replacethat idea with “hard work.”

Pillar: Work Ethic

Key Topics: preparation; intentionality; relationships; goal-setting; capability; capacity; SMART goals; hard work;

Click. Clack. It’s the last sound we hear before stepping out onto the field. It’s the unmistakable click clack of cleats on concrete. There’s a rush that comes with that sound because it carries with it all the hype of a game about to start.There’s a sense of pride that helps us dig deeper and go further to protect our home field advantage. We should be applying that same pride and drive to protect something even more important than our home field advantage: our character.

Pillar:  Personal Code

Key Topic: pressure; pride; family values; conflict; team values; coaching beyond the game

No one just stumbles into success. We have to succeed on purpose.A lot of time is spent focusing on why we are doing things. What is our reason and purpose for wanting to achieve this specific end result? Why is this goal special? But that’s not really what we’re talking about right now. There’sa difference between having a purpose and acting with purpose. Havinga purpose means having a goal that we are working towards for a reason. Acting with purpose means intentionally performing the actions required to reach that goal.

It’s easy to say “I’m all in.” But how many of us actually put in 100% if we’re really being honest?It’s hard to actually go all in. What if we put all we have into this moment right here and it doesn’t work out? What if we give it our all throughout the game, and then we’re stuck in overtime with no energy left? “What if” is a mindset that will strangle our ability to give our all to anything. When we focus too much on what could potentially happen, the fear of not being prepared for it can cripple us.We need to let go of the “What if” mindset. We need to let go of the fear to trust. Because it’s only when we let go of the “What if” mindset that we can go all in on our goals and dreams. It’s only when we let go of the fear of trust that we can go all in on ourselves, our teammates, and our coaches

Character will always overcome reputation. Sometimes that’s hard to believe because the cost has to be paid now, but the reward comes later. It’s a bit like saving for a car or college. We feel the pinch in the present and only have an intangible vision of the future to convince us that we’re doing the right thing by sacrificing now for something better later.Our character will always catch up to our reputation. The things that are true about us on the inside (our character) are always greater than what seems to be true on the outside (our reputation). Besides, it’s draining to live two separate lives. The energy we spend cultivating our reputation would be much better spent cultivating our character.

Excellence is like grandma’s pie. It’s not perfect, and it’s not cookie-cutter. It’s unique. Only grandma can make it the way she makes it.Preparation. Integrity. Effort. PIE. We are the only ones who can control those three key ingredients to excellence.Excellence is not defined by points or any other game stat. It is defined by our prepa-ration and effort, which hinges on our integrity. When we prepare well, and when we give our best effort, it shows that we are acting with integrity. Those three things are what qualify us to execute on our goals and dreams.

When we think about competition, we probably think about competing against another person or multiple people. But even when we participate in a competition with others, there’s always one competitor that we should be striving to beat, more than any other: ourselves.When we focus on competing with another person, we just have to be as good as them, or slightly better than they are. That limits how good we actually are or should be. When we focus on competing with ourselves, there’s no limit to how great we can become.Instead of letting others set the standard by competing against them, we should be setting our own standards and competing against ourselves. When our standards are driven by our goals and integrity, we improve little by little, every single day, without limit.

The most important step we will ever take towards reaching our goal is the next step. It doesn’t matter if we’re on step 15 or if we haven’t even taken a step yet toward the end goal. No matter where we are on the present journey, the most important step is the one we are about to take.Instead of ruminating on the past or trying to predict the future, we should be focusing on the one thing we can control: the next step.What is the next most immediate thing we have to do? It could be running laps, going to a Spanish class, or eating lunch. Whatever that next step in our day is, we should do it with excellence and focus. If we focus on the next step, that will bring about inner strength and unlock our potential.

Every person we meet is either going through a struggle, coming out of a struggle, or about to go into a struggle. There’s nothing we can do about that because we can’t control whether we are going to struggle. In a sense, that’s kind of freeing because it means we have no reason to be ashamed that we are struggling.Overcoming trials and struggle is how we grow into the most complete version of ourselves. Steel doesn’t become one of the hardest workable materials on earth un-less it is tempered with fire, and a person doesn’t understand their true inner charac-ter without struggle. There is a bright future awaiting us, but we have to go through struggle to get to it.

Pillar: Servant Leadership

Key Topics: gratitude; thankfulness; be grateful; struggle; life happens for me; what are you full of?; positivity; perspective; where there's a will there's a way; positive mindset; narrative; thankfulness gratitude journal;