The Difference Between Winning and Succeeding

As a young agent entering the business, I am still deciding who and what I am going to become. I am constantly looking for athletes, coaches and other agents to inspire me which led me to the website TED.com. The TED.com speaker that really inspired me was former UCLA basketball coach John Wooden who is affectionately known as Coach. Although I am 26 and living my adult life, I still seek ways to become inspired and to become a better me. Coach has always been an inspiration and his TED.com video titled "The Difference Between Winning and Succeeding" shares an even deeper understanding of how and when he developed his coaching and teaching philosophy. He shared with the audience about how his father raised him and the significant stories/events that caused him to grow/change his philosophies, which also garnered trust with the audience. He shared childhood stories and stories of when he first began teaching in grade school to show why his philosophy was so important.

His speech definitely helped me develop a deeper understanding of how I should measure my own success. One of his quotes that really stuck with me was, "Success is a 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." To me, this means that life is not about winning or outscoring anyone. It’s not about acquiring more material things or getting more rewards for my accomplishments than someone else. Life is simply about becoming the best man I can with what I have been given. Life is about recognizing my best effort as a degree of success as opposed to my desired outcome.

Coach is well known for a model he created called the “The Pyramid of Success”. This pyramid can be found at his website and shows different traits of success as measurements of faith and patience. The pyramid consists of 15 building blocks and each block has a trait along with what he thinks what a person is to do to accomplish the given trait. By following this pyramid, it was his intention and my belief that a person will become successful. After a journey to grow each block and build my own pyramid of success, I believe I will become the best man and agent I am able of becoming.