Less Than a Minute to Go Read online

  Copyright © 2013 by Dr. Bill Thierfelder.

  All rights reserved. With the exception of short excerpts used in articles and critical review, no part of this work may be reproduced, transmitted, or stored in any form whatsoever, printed or electronic, without the prior written permission of the publisher.

  Cataloging-in-Publication data on file with the Library of Congress.

  ISBN: 978-1-61890-403-4

  Published in the United States by

  Saint Benedict Press, LLC

  PO Box 410487

  Charlotte, NC 28241

  www.saintbenedictpress.com

  Printed and bound in the United States of America.

  For Mary, my one, my wife,

  and for all of my good children,

  Mary, Joseph, Elizabeth, John,

  James, Thomas, Luke, Ann,

  Peter and Matthew, who help

  me to see the perfection of the

  present moment

  CONTENTS

  Foreword by Coach Mike Krzyzewski

  Introduction

  The big picture.

  PART ONE: PREPARING YOUR MIND TO WIN

  The most common mental obstacles that get in the way of world-class performance.

  Chapter 1: All Work and No Play

  Play is where world-class performance is born.

  Chapter 2: Running on Empty

  Playing for all the wrong reasons.

  Chapter 3: Unsportsmanlike Conduct

  Belief determines emotion.

  Chapter 4: Don’t Just Stand There

  Awareness and adaptation; the process of change.

  Chapter 5: The Pressure’s On

  The power of words.

  PART TWO: MAKING PEAK PERFORMANCE A COMMON OCCURRENCE

  Only those that understand peak performance can repeat it often and on demand.

  Chapter 6: Walking on Water

  Peak performance happens when it is least expected.

  Chapter 7: Instant Replay

  Reproducing peak performance when it counts.

  PART THREE: PLAYING WITH A PASSION THAT NEVER ENDS

  The stronger your purpose the better your performance.

  Chapter 8: O Captain! My Captain!

  Virtuous performances.

  Chapter 9: Playing Hurt

  Pain without a purpose is intolerable to human beings.

  Chapter 10: Less Than a Minute to Go

  The deeper meaning.

  FOREWORD

  IT WAS more than a love for the game of basketball that inspired me to devote my life and career to coaching, it was a passion for teaching and learning. I believe that to be a great teacher, you have to be an ever-willing learner; the process is reciprocal. And the main topic I have enjoyed learning and teaching the most throughout my career is leadership.

  I have been fortunate to meet some great leaders from many walks of life and I love to engage in discussions with them on the topic—to hear them explain their philosophies, to learn new techniques and see things from new perspectives and sometimes to find common leadership ground even when our backgrounds and fields are vastly different. I am committed to never stop learning and it is this commitment, in part, that drives me to keep doing what I do.

  Dr. Bill Thierfelder is one of the leaders whose lessons and thoughts on the subject I value and appreciate. He has an unparalleled understanding of what it takes for an individual to turn his or her peak performance into their standard. As a leader and as a mentor to athletes, he knows exactly how to be the kind of leader who can help people develop that standard.

  I love the way that Bill talks about pressure. For some, it is a frightening word—a word that is accompanied by the fear of failure. In this book, Bill explains how to redefine pressure as an opportunity. Whether in sport, in business or in life, approaching pressure with excitement and confidence, as opposed to anxiety, is a critical step in becoming a top performer.

  I also appreciate the way that Bill talks about expectations. I don’t impose many “rules” with my teams. Instead, together we develop a set of standards unique to that particular group at that particular time. The standards we develop are important—they define who we are and who we hope to become during the course of a season. But more important than the words and values we choose as ours is the fact that they are ours. The most important standard that an individual or team sets is the one that comes from the inside, not those that are imposed from the outside. We ought to be the ones to define who we are and, more than that, who we can and will become.

  Bill’s book is ultimately about setting one’s own standards and making certain that the standards you set are worthy, that they challenge you to achieve a level where peak performance is not something sought and rarely found but, rather, that your best self is your most common self.

  In this book, my friend Bill Thierfelder, a great leader and motivator, puts the words and descriptions to what we leaders try to do every day—to challenge ourselves and our teams to be at our best, all the time.

  — Mike Krzyzewski, 2013

  INTRODUCTION

  THE sold-out crowd at Miami’s Orange Bowl had started to celebrate. With six seconds remaining in the game and with Boston College down 45–41, the game was over. The reigning NCAA Division I National Champions, the University of Miami Hurricanes, had weathered an incredible shoot-out with the Boston College Eagles. All that remained was for BC to run their last play from the Miami forty-seven yard-line and the oranges would start flying. The only problem was that no one had told BC quarterback, Doug Flutie.

  With twenty-eight seconds remaining in the game Flutie began the drive from his own twenty yard-line. His first thought was, “Given the time, I probably have four pass plays.” World-class performers focus on what they can and will do. As he entered the huddle his confidence and resolve filled the team around him. Within two plays they were on the Miami forty-seven yard-line. The third pass fell incomplete, but to Flutie it was as if it had never happened. World-class performers remain focused in the present moment. Only six seconds remained in a game where both teams had combined for more than twelve-hundred yards of total offense. As Flutie came to the line, his eyes revealed a mind in control. He loved the game; he loved playing. And it showed. He was in the backyard with his buddies about to run everyone’s favorite play: the last second Hail Mary.

  The ball was snapped and Flutie dropped back to pass. Before he could get set, he saw All-American defensive linemen Jerome Brown lunging toward him. Flutie had an uncanny knack for slipping out of a defensive player’s grasp at the last millisecond. Suddenly he was rolling out to his right, back to the BC thirty-five, with the defense closing in on him fast. In the melee Flutie never lost composure or focus. With determination and purpose he stepped toward the thirty-seven yard-line and threw a Hail Mary pass into a 30 mph headwind. The Miami defenders anticipated it, but that was the problem. They thought about what should happen rather than seeing what was happening. As they stood on the five yard line waiting to break-up the fifty yard pass that would never come they failed to recognize that the diminutive 5’10” 173 lb. quarterback had actually thrown a sixty-three yard pass. By the time they realized it the ball had sailed over their heads and straining finger tips into the waiting arms of Gerard Phelan who caught the miraculous pass with no time left on the clock. Touchdown!

  The backyard joy of old erupted. The BC players exploded into celebration, jumping, hugging, yelling, whooping, and frolicking around the field of play. No amount of money, power, or fame could add to that moment. The sheer joy of playing their best was all that counted. Those other things may come later but they would be, at best, faint reminders of that mystical moment of play: where pla
y and wisdom find common ground in the contemplation of the highest things; where they exist for their own sake and not some mean and artificial end.

  This is where the very best of world-class performance can cross over into a special realm known as peak performance: playing for its own sake with every skill, talent, and ability brought to bear in the present moment. The Greeks had a word for it, arête, meaning excellence or virtue. Aristotle said, “Excellence is an art won by training and habituation. We do not act rightly because we have virtue or excellence, but we rather have those because we have acted rightly. We are what we repeatedly do. Excellence, then, is not an act but a habit.”

  * * * * *

  I once spoke to several hundred retired players at the Annual NFL Players Association Meeting, and I asked them, “How many of you during your careers were trying to perfect the intellectual virtue of art?” They looked at me as if to say, “Are you sure you’re in the right place?” I smiled in an assuring way and asked them, “How many of you were trying to perfect yourselves as football players?” Everyone in the room raised their hands. “That,” I said, “is the intellectual virtue of art.” It is the right method of external production. It means that if you are trying to perfect yourself through your work in business, carpentry, football, or anything else, then you are engaged in the intellectual virtue of art.

  However, art is only one of the virtues and virtues do not exist in isolation. You need prudence, for example, in order to have fortitude otherwise you will tend toward one of two extremes: cowardice or recklessness. The virtues are interconnected. The more of them you have the happier you will be and the better you will perform. The virtues also go hand-in-hand with being a great athlete, coach, worker, friend, spouse, or parent. Being any of one these is all about achieving excellence; virtue. You don’t have to choose between being a world-class athlete and a saint. You can be—and hopefully desire to be—both. In fact, if you’re striving to be a top athlete and a good person, you’re already cultivating many virtues, like discipline, fortitude, prudence, and courage, among others.

  But while sport can be a great way to grow in virtue, the culture surrounding sport can often make cultivating some of the virtues—like temperance, modesty, and humility—extremely difficult. In many ways professional sport leads the way in aggrandizing the vices of pride, anger, envy, sloth, greed, gluttony, and lust as its most prized icons. Vice, of course, is nothing new. It is the habit of doing bad and has been part of the human condition as far back as Adam and Eve. Today, however, the increasing competition for consumer dollars and attention, as well as advances in technology and communications, bombard us with every sordid detail. Nothing is held back. But as much as sport is a reflection of society it also has the ability to influence and shape it.

  What can we do about it? Many good people tend to say one of two things: “Oh, well what can you do? I hate it. It’s not right, but that’s just the way it is.” At the other end of the spectrum people say, “Well I just don’t want anything to do with it. I refuse to even look at it.” But I contend that neither approach is the right one.

  Sport affects everyone. Even those who don’t care about watching a major league baseball game can get caught in stadium traffic. Sport related products and activities generate hundreds of billions of dollars each year. The word “billion” gets thrown around like it’s pocket change, but consider that if you stacked one billion single dollar bills on top of each other they would reach over sixty-three miles into space. That’s a lot of cash to influence players and fans for good or for ill. To allow vice to dominate sport at all levels while thinking that it will not have an adverse impact on society and our culture, or that it’s not going to negatively influence you, your children, or your grandchildren, is to live in denial; we criticize it, but we’re actually enabling it to happen if we continue to support it and allow it to just keep rolling along in its present state.

  The third option is for us—the fans, the coaches, the athletes, and the parents—to reclaim the game and take back sport, business, and everyday life by making them a means for developing virtue. You can be a good person and a great performer all at the same time. They are not mutually exclusive. Sport, like everything we do, should be about the development of the whole person. Sport, then, can be used to impact society and culture for good, and it can be used to cultivate good and virtuous people, one athlete, coach, parent, or fan at a time. It can be quite difficult, but the good news is that many of the methods used to become a great athlete are the same methods used to become a virtuous person.

  * * * * *

  Too often we separate and compartmentalize our lives. We deal with the body over here, the mind over here, and the soul over here. Well, I don’t know about you, but I’m all three things at the same fraction of a second. However helpful it may be to separate these things out in order to talk or write about them, the reality is that we are all three things at the same time. Knowing how to make them all work together at the same moment is key to performing at the highest level and living a good life.

  When I work with athletes, I go through the same process. In the first session I help them to improve some physical aspect of their game although they are usually unaware of how much it had to do with the mental and spiritual factors involved. The immediate positive result is a proof to them that there is something good happening here. Then I show them how their physical improvement is really rooted in their mental abilities and skills. And from there, they quickly come to see that both the physical and mental are mere extensions of their soul. All three are unified, connected.

  Let me show you what I mean. A few years ago, I was working with a very talented NFL wide receiver. We were alone on an indoor turf field where I was throwing him passes at a high velocity while he ran various routes. After about seven or eight, he dropped a pass while running a ten yard out-pattern, and let slip a choice four-letter word while he stamped his foot down in disgust. “”Whoa!” I said. He quickly looked over at me as the sound of my voice seemed to pull him back from his own little world. “What did you say?” I asked. He looked at me a little sheepishly and said, “Well, I, I dropped the ball.” “I know you dropped the ball but what did you say?” I replied. “I was just upset that I dropped the ball,” he said. “Thank you, Jesus,” I said. He looked at me like I had hit him over the head with a two by four and said, “What do you mean?” This receiver is a Christian athlete, and so I asked him, “Aren’t you thankful in all things?” (1Th5:18) He offered a hesitant “Y-y-y-yeah.” So I repeated, “Thank you Jesus.” He paused for a second and then said, quite unenthusiastically, “Thank you Jesus.”

  “Good, now come on back,” I said.

  There were two reasons why I encouraged him to say, “Thank you, Jesus.” The first has to do with the virtue of gratitude: we should be thankful in all things. The second one is purely pragmatic and sports performance related. Can an NFL wide receiver catch a ball? Of course! So if he drops a ball it’s certainly not because he can’t catch. There’s a reason he dropped the ball. The problem is that while he’s cursing and stomping the ground in displeasure he has lost something; the awareness of why he dropped the ball. The reason for his anger was due to pride. He cursed to show me how upset he was about dropping the ball because he is much better than that and he doesn’t drop balls. While he was doing that, however, he lost the precious moment when he had the ability to feel what happened. Unfortunately, since he didn’t know why he dropped the ball, there’s a good chance he would drop it again in the future for the same reason. But by saying, “Thank you Jesus,” he can immediately move past the emotions and reflect on what actually happened. Was the cut not sharp enough, did his head not snap around fast enough, did he not see the ball in detail, or did he not have energy in his hands greater than the ball?

  He ran ten or twelve more routes, and eventually dropped another ball. He was about to say that word again but he caught himself and turned to look at me. I tilted my head slightly, an
d he said mechanically, “Thank you, Jesus.”

  “Good, now what happened?” I asked him. Although he wasn’t absolutely sure, he thought that maybe he hadn’t snapped his head around fast enough as he planted to make the out cut. He was right. Not surprisingly, he got better and better at knowing precisely what he did, and as a result he dropped fewer balls. Even he was amazed at some of the incredible catches that he made during the session, which in the past would have gone uncaught or written off as bad passes. Over time, this became natural, a good habit—a virtue. Now the first thing he says if he ever drops a ball is, “Thank you, Jesus!” and he means it.

  In one session he improved in body, mind and spirit and became not only a better wide receiver but a better person. This way of training and approaching life helped him to perform better physically. It helped him to focus his mind on the specific problems he was having catching the ball. And it helped him direct all his actions toward the good, toward God.

  It’s here where sport really shines. It not only holds the secrets to winning, of world-class and peak performances, but more importantly it can help you to become a better person physically, mentally, and spiritually. With dedication and a lot of practice, an athlete can make that last second shot, or that game-winning touchdown grab, and he can become virtuous. And the best part about sport is that he can do them both at the same time. All that is needed is desire and the willingness to act on it. Take the story you just heard. Chances are, you’re not an NFL wide receiver, but with gratitude, awareness, and focus on the task at hand, you will become a better husband, father, coach, or business professional. Once you know how sport is properly directed everything you do will be better.

  That’s the point of this book: to achieve peak performance—to be the best that you can be—on and off the field. Throughout I’ll offer stories and exercises and drills that will not only help you become a better athlete, but, more importantly, help you become a better person. In my years of competing as an Olympic-level high jumper I’ve seen what it takes to achieve peak performance, and later as a sports psychologist, I’ve helped hundreds of professional and collegiate athletes become the best that they can be on and off the field. And I want to help you achieve the same success.