Aug. 23, 2010
John Wooden was a good speaker. Because of what he had accomplished, people paid attention to him -- and still do.
He took advantage of his career success to get out his message of what constitutes success, which was not victories.Yet he could downplay victories only because he had more of them than any other collegiate basketball coach in history.
The way he played life's game let him achieve what he did. He went to UCLA -- his second choice -- when UCLA had no basketball program worth talking about. They played in a tiny, stuffy gym. A decade after he arrived, he had nationally ranked teams, but in California he had to get by USF (Bill Russell, K. C. Jones). After those teams (60 consecutive wins -- the record), there was Berkeley (NCAA champs, then NCAA runner-ups). UCLA could not beat them in the regional finals. It took a quarter century to get to the final four (1962). Then came the dynasty (1964-75), including 88 consecutive victories.
In his 17-minute talk, he presents his definition of success. Then he illustrates it from his teaching career, starting in 1934. He attributes most of his understanding to his father's teaching.
His techniques of success are simple. If they were not so difficult to implement, we might dismiss them as platitudes. They aren't.
I will tell you the one I have found the most difficult to implement: "Don't compare yourself to someone else." This applies upward and downward.
In the speech, he says he told his players this: "Don't criticize another player." The thought of anyone on Coach Wooden's teams "talking trash" -- belittling a rival player -- is inconceivable.
Decades ago, I first heard this from Wooden: "Be decent to people on your way up. You'll meet them again on your way down."
Here is what I have learned from over five decades of experience: whatever you achieve, there is always someone who has outperformed you. Lots, in fact.
As you climb the pyramid of success, you move into higher levels. These are more competitive. They are filled with people who are better performers than those you competed with down below.
I discovered this in 1958, when I went to Boys State. I either met or saw some very successful people in action. Because of Google, I can see how some of them turned out. A few did very well. Others didn't.
Ken Hubbs, the greatest athlete in California that year (all-American in football and basketball), was a top student. He became rookie of the year in the National League. It did not last. He died in a plane crash in 1964. He was flying the plane.Stacy Keach, head of the Whig Party, remains a successful actor. Yet he served time because of cocaine possession. (Let's face it: the cocaine had him in its possession.) He recovered. This is good.
Dwight Chapin, head of the Tory Party, went to the White House, then to jail (Watergate).
Dan Avey was maybe the funniest person I have ever known. By 1960, he had become a radio announcer. He did so as a college freshman. He went on to have a fine career. He even got his star on the Hollywood walkway. He found his area of service early, and he served the listeners well. [6:51 p.m., Sunday evening. I am sitting here stunned. I never write on Sundays, but I wanted to add this entry on Dan -- a positive note. So, I went to Google to check a fact on him. There, I learned that he died of cancer last Sunday. He had fought it for five years. I was going to add this: "His photo looks like he is ten years younger than I am -- annoying." I was looking for that photo. He was a sports broadcaster, a news broadcaster, and a funny guy. His Wikipedia entry says that he worked with Sean Hannity in Los Angeles. He was a thoroughly nice man -- and a real success, in every sense.]
Joe Faust in 1960 became the third person and first white man to clear 7 feet in the high jump. He went to the 1960 Olympics at age 17. He had been training for this for seven years. He was a straight-A student in high school. He was my role model when I was 17 and he was 16, even though I had beaten him a few weeks before Boys State in a regional election among student scholars. He became a good friend in my senior year. He dropped out of college. Today, he lives in self-imposed poverty, yet those who interview him speak well of him. If I were to write his biography, it would be Ups and Downs.
The most successful of them all was Lenny Ross, and he died a suicide 27 years later.
The lesson: you just can't know how others will finish the race. The poem, "Richard Cory," is on target. So is the Simon & Garfunkel version -- far more on target.
If you let others' achievements define your success, you will always see yourself as a loser. Wooden understood this, and he warned his players about it.
I spent my early adulthood in the shadow of my father-in-law's productivity, later in the shadow of Murray Rothbard's output. There was no way that I could exceed their output in quality. So, I decided to go for quantity. My model was Isaac Asimov, but I knew that no one could ever beat him: 506 books, at least one in nine of the ten numbers in the Dewey classification system (he missed Philosophy). I knew my limits.
For endurance as a speaker, my model is Chick Hearn, the voice of the Lakers. I have explained why here. For endurance as a writer, it is Jacques Barzun, whose first book was in 1927 and his last (so far) was in 2000, his magnum opus, From Dawn to Decadence: 1500 to the Present. These are models to imitate, not equal. I know my limits.
So, was Wooden right about comparisons? Yes, but only with this qualification. We should look to see how a successful person did great things. We should do this to see if we can discover his principle of success. Then we should apply it in our own situation. Wooden's success grabbed many people's attention. This is why people listened to an old man who recited mediocre poetry to make his points. We compare our success with his, not to become successful at his level, but to find out the ethics of success, the discipline of success. We want to learn how he made the journey. He ended well. We want to end well.
This assumes that good performance is based on good character, that the fruits of success are the results of the ethical roots. He believed this. He built most of his life on this (except for riding the referees). If we don't believe this, then we will be ensnared by the pursuit of results. That was what Wooden warned against. So do I.
Keep reminding yourself of this. I try to. I am now old enough now to understand this, but it took me over four decades to accept it.
Example: I would rather copy Warren Buffett than Donald Trump. But I would rather copy Howard Buffett than Warren Buffett.
What do you want someone to say at your funeral? I think I know. You want someone to be able to show plausibly that the good you achieved was based on the principles you lived by. So, work on the principles, then the self-discipline. We all need both.
Then what must we avoid? The pursuit of applause for its own sale. That is the killer. Applause is good as a means. Wooden had lots of, which is why he got to speak. He did not speak to get the applause.
Here is the rule: life's sanctions are means, not ends.
Now, I will present my lifetime non-model. He was the finest teacher I ever had: Douglass Adair. He taught the American Revolution. He influenced a generation of early American historians, both as a teacher and as the editor of The William and Mary Quarterly. He was the first scholar to figure out which author wrote which of the Federalist Papers. He wrote an indispensable essay on the founding: "Fame and the Founding Fathers." He did not think he had achieved much. He despaired that he had never written an important book. Yet his 1943 Ph.D. dissertation had been read for decades by the most important scholars in the field. There are records of who checked it out. He must have known; it was footnoted by others. Few Ph.D. dissertations ever are. It was finally published in 2000: The Intellectual Origins of Jeffersonian Democracy. He never knew. In 1968, he killed himself. He did not finish well.
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