Winning and Success

John Wooden was born in 1910 and is the first person to be inducted into the Basketball Hall of Fame both as a player and coach. In his 40 years at UCLA, he has mentored legends such as Bill Walton and Kareem Abdul-Jabbar. Mr. Wooden has created a model, the Pyramid of Success, in order to teach his players to be victors in life, not just on the court. To do this he treated them as an extended family; emphasizing that winning was more than scoring and his definition of success is as follows: “Success is peace of mind which is a direct result of self-satisfaction in knowing you made the effort to become the best that you are capable of becoming.”

Below is an talk that Mr. Wooden did back in the early 2000’s where he explains his meaning of success and urges us all to achieve our personal best.

I believe that the most important lesson that one can take away from Mr Wooden is that you should not be concerned with being better then anyone else just the betterment of yourself. We as dancers, myself included, get caught up in being the best that there is and not necessarily being the best that we ourselves can be  makes it difficult when attempting to judge ones progression.

In order to truly figure out if you as a person or dancer are reaching your potential think about your own abilities and goals. Don’t set yourself up against another person, look at how far you have come since you have started and where you would like to be. Ask yourself if you are doing what needs to be done to reach your goals? If you realize that you have already reached  your goals you may have set them too low and have yet to fully utilize your potential.