Treat Yourself Like Your Own Best Friend
Nov 13 2010

The title of this post was one of 4 pieces of advice that Coach Augie Garrido (wikipedia) gave during his talk last week at the Austin chapter of the Technology Entrepreneur’s Exchange (Texchange).  I have attended several Texchange events and I was a table moderator for this event.  My great neighbor, who sits on the board of Texchange, and who also happens to be a long time reader of my blog :-), invited me to be a table moderator.  He knew I might enjoy it and have some words of wisdom to contribute since the topic was “Facing Adversity.”

Coach Garrido coaches the University of Texas at Austin baseball team and is the “all time winningest coach in the NCAA Division 1 Baseball.”  He is a six-time National Coach of the Year and has won five national championships.  Now, I don’t follow most sports and least of all baseball, but he had several gems of advice and motivation to share.  The one that stuck out  most to me was “Treat yourself like your own best friend.”  He said that often players will encourage/support/forgive others on their team that messed up, but judge themselves harshly which can really throw them off their game.  He also said something like “baseball is a game of failure.”  It’s hard to get all the way around and get someone through home plate so that means to me, you have to deal with more than a few screw-ups.

Here are a few other things he said that resonated with me:

  • Teamwork is about trust.  It starts with trust and from trust comes respect and from respect comes teamwork.
  • Remove the winning from the process.
  • You can’t control the things around you, but you can control your response.
  • We all need a purpose individually and as a team.
  • You are only as strong as your weakest link.  (We’ve all heard that one before and oh, how true it is.  The weakest link can bring down your strongest links and cause them to take their eyes off the proverbial ball.)

I think team sports are important for kids to participate in.  Being a part of a team really helps you in life and in business.  You win some you lose some and on really good teams it’s not just about one or two superstars, it’s about how the team performs together.  I see this on my son’s soccer team.  The team wins when the players pass well and make goals.  The person making the goal can’t make the goal if his team mates don’t pass the ball to him at the opportune time.  They aren’t out there worrying about who takes credit.  They just want their team to win.  Just like in a good sports team, a good team shares ideas and doesn’t feel threatened by other people contributing to the success of the team or helping others.  Some get recognition for visibly making business goals, some for passing on information/connections to those who need it, some for making sure things get done.

Great coaches/bosses know how to coordinate it day after week after month after year.   And sometimes, you have an off year like our poor UT Austin Longhorn football team is having this year.  That’s life! Personally, I’m hoping my off years are behind me and there are only good/winning years ahead since I’m my own mom and business coach (with a lot of help from some fabulous friends, family, and co-workers of course!).  One has to have hope… 😀

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