Coach Bill Walsh spoke once about riding the bus home after yet another losing game. He was miserable. Here he’d been working so hard with the team, and for what? Seemed the best thing to do was to quit. He was trying to decide when to do it.
“And then,” he said, “we started winning.”
The team won the next game, and the next, and many more after that. The seeds Walsh had planted and had been nurturing for months finally sprouted.
Imagine if he’d given up instead. Yet that’s what so many of us are tempted to do when things don’t seem to be working out.
“Character,” I once heard a man say, “is what remains after the original enthusiasm has passed.”
Bill Walsh had character. And so do we all. The question is: Are you willing to put yours into practice?
The Hebrew phrase “Yasher Koach” is often said after someone reads from the Torah. It’s easy to assume that people are saying, “Good job,” and some people see it that way. But the words are translated as “From strength to strengh,” and I take that to mean, “In this moment, you have shown strength. Remember that strength as you go forward.”
So think of a moment when you “rose to the occasion,” when you did something you didn’t think you could, maybe didn’t even want to do but knew was necessary. Write down the event, your reservations about what you had to do, and what you then did. Date the note. Next time you’ve got something ahead of you that you’re not sure you can face, pull out that note and let it remind you what you are capable of doing.
(Originally published in “From Strength to Strength,” ideasmadereal.blogspot.com.)
©2009 Laynie Tzena.
No comments yet.