Wooden's Secret of Success - Self Control

This season we are focusing weekly on the John Wooden's famous Pyramid of Success. Our aim is to instill in our athletes the character traits of team work and the building blocks of competitive success. While in Mammoth, our discussions focused on the base level of the pyramid, and now that the season has started we're working our way to the top and a block a week will be our aim.

These short articles are being written each week by Coach Clendenen:

Secret #6 in John Wooden’s Pyramid of Success is “Self Control”. We show self-control each day as we avoid eating too much, spending too much money or making choices that don’t help us become the best person that we can be. Wooden defines self-control by saying we must “practice self discipline and keep emotions under control. Good judgment and common sense are essential”.

Building on the base blocks of hard work, enthusiasm and team play, Wooden links the block of self-control with the trait of “ambition”- an ambition for NOBLE goals. When we combine the two, we see how they must go hand-in-hand for without having a goal, any goal, there would be no real need to practice self-control of any sort.

At first glance it may appear that self-control is what we need to discipline ourselves away from the playing field. We have goals to race better, improve our times, to rise to the occasion and therefore we must eat right, stay focused, go to bed early, and make sacrifices for the sake of our sport. Ultimately these are important, especially as teenagers who are surrounded by so many out of control people. Through self-control you will indeed become a better runner. You will feel strong; self confident in knowing you have done the right things to help you become a better athlete. More important to all of this however is how self-control will help you become a stronger individual and one that can truly set, create and achieve a noble goal.

Wooden says that “Success is peace of mind, which is the direct result of self-satisfaction in knowing you’ve done the best of which you are capable.” Self-control seems to be the clear stepping stone to achieving the kind of success that leads to the peace of mind that you have indeed done the best of which you are capable. How many times have we finished a race, practice, test, assignment, conversation with a friend or loved one and said, “I could have done better. I can be better.” We are full of regrets. We don’t race, act, believe or speak nobly. With clearly defined goals, ambition to become bigger than we have ever been before, we must practice self-control in all paths of life. Your actions, thoughts, values must become natural and not forced. They must be applied to your life and your life only for we are all faced with different circumstances and must rise above them. It is our head that must rest soundly on the pillow at night knowing we have peace of mind in being the best person we can be.

In the book Beyond Success, based on Wooden’s pyramid, the author Brian D. Biro, shares the story of Jackie Robinson, an obvious candidate for someone that epitomized self-control. Robinson, is a baseball hero who broke the color barrier when he became the first African American to play in Major League Baseball in 1947. Robinson, who played for the Brooklyn Dodgers, was obviously a success athletically, helping his team win the World Series six times, winning the National League’s MVP and playing on six All Star teams. Robinson clearly had to show self-control as a professional athlete, but in an era where people spit on him in public, mocked him on the field when he was up to bat and forced him to do things separately from his teammates while they were in public, he had to show self control in even more profound ways. Robinson was known to never complain, never fight back and never put anyone down. He was there when his teammates needed encouragement and made it a point to reach out his hand to a fellow opponent. He is known for saying that it did not matter if people liked him or not, the only thing that mattered was that they respected him.

Self-control knows that you must treat your own life with the sort of respect you hope to earn from others. It is a knowing that you are rising above the value that sometimes society places on us. It means living a life nobly to better those around you and to live your life in a way that helps you realize you are becoming the person that people can recognize as a goal-setter, a leader and a team player that stands up for what is right even when others may disagree. It is living your best life. This goes back to the groundwork for the pyramid. In order to be a good teammate you need to not strive to be like someone else on the team and compare yourself to others, but to make yourself a better person for the sake of the team.

As long as we are breathing, living and enjoying all the great opportunities we are presented with each day, we must strive to be better. We will be faced with adversity, obstacles and difficulties. We will have to help others overcome their own personal tragedies, defeats and struggles. We will face circumstances that we just can’t control- but we will want to control anyway. It will make us sad, mad, scared, and feel defeated. It is our amazing ability as humans, however to rise above these challenges and show great self-control because we respect the gifts and lives we have been given and to act with great ambition for the next opportunity to succeed in practice, in the classroom, in a race, in your home and in your community.