Pyramid of Success
#15 - Competitive Greatness
"Perform at your best when your best is required. Your best is required each day."
#15 - Competitive Greatness
For more than half a century I have defined Competitive Greatness as follows: "A real love for the hard battle, knowing it offers the opportunity to be at your best when your best is required."
The great competitors that I have played for, coached, and admired all shared a joy derived from the struggle itself - the journey, the contest. They have done so because only in that supreme effort is there an opportunity to summon your best, a personal greatness that cannot be diminished, dismissed, or derided because of a final score or bottom line.
In my view, there is nothing tiresome or trite in the old adage, "When the going gets tough, the tough get going." I have tried hard to meet that criterion and teach it to others throughout my life. At the exact moment when the going gets tough, the thrill of competition gets going for a leader who has acquired Competitive Greatness.
I believe this is one of the crucial concepts that you can convey to those under your supervision when you're in a position of leadership; namely, a true love for the hard battle and the test it provides against a worthy opponent.
The hard struggle is to be welcomed, never feared. In fact, when you define success this way, the only thing to fear is your own unwillingness to make the full 100 percent effort to prepare and perform at the highest level of your ability.
If you are a leader, you must teach your team to love the struggle because only in hard competition will you, and they, find Competitive Greatness.
I took nearly fifteen years to choose and define the blocks of my Pyramid of Success because I recognized that ultimately they would be used to help me and those under my supervision achieve Competitive Greatness. For me, this was, and is, something of the highest significance.
Of course, my sincere hope is that you may derive the same benefit I did from the values found in the Pyramid of Success. In a real way, it has been my own personal road map to pursuing and, at times, achieving Competitive Greatness.
~ John Wooden
