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People often tout such things as “teamwork” and “sacrificing the individual for the greater good” and “overcoming adversity” as benefits of playing sports.  Like bad tasting medicine, the things that sports can teach you are often portrayed as something to be endured on the path to learning some tough lessons.

There are other, less painful things that sports (and a good coach) can teach.

The first of these is Focus.

Focus is an interesting subject.  It involves something called attentional field.  Attentional field is made up of everything on which you could focus.  Attentional field includes all those things that are subjective, inside of you, such as thoughts, emotions, and physical responses, plus those things that are objective, outside of you, including sights and sounds.  Focus is the ability to attend to internal and external cues in your attentional field (see here for details.) Focus is not just something that you have or do not have, it is something which can be taught, developed, and nurtured. Focus, or attention, can be subjective (internal) or objective (external) or a blend of both. A good coach will recognize the particular type of focus best suited to each individual athlete she or he coaches.

We have all seen coaches who, after an athlete has made a mistake, refocus that athlete on what is coming up, not allowing the athlete to be defeated by the mistake but rather to intensify their efforts towards what comes next. For other athletes, the reverse is needed. After they do something, good of bad, they need to be directed back to it to review it and to internalize the lesson which can be learned from it.

For some athletes it’s internal focus and for some it’s external focus.  A good coach can nurture either.

Whether internal focus or external focus, the focus must be tuned toward what needs to be done in any given situation.

Some time ago, I was watching on during a session at the Michael Jordan Flight School camp in which campers picked at random were given the opportunity to win a pair of Air Jordans by sinking a free throw in front of the whole crowd of campers and onlookers with the condition that if they missed the free throw they had to do some number of push-ups.  For most of the young kids, it was a daunting pressure-packed free throw.  One camper, however, displayed a bit of cockiness and upped the ante.  Make the shot and his whole team would win a pair of shoes.  Michael responded without missing a beat, “And if you miss, the whole team does push-ups.”  The camper, after first checking with his teammates, agreed.  Before shooting the free-throw, he confirmed with MJ the terms, “The whole team gets shoes.”  And MJ confirmed, “Or the whole team does push-ups.”

The young man missed the free-throw, which provided Michael the opportunity for a teaching point.  “You missed the free-throw because you were focused on the reward and the consequence.  You should have focused on your shot.”

Preparation is the second thing sports can teach us. Preparation serves as a strong aid in developing focus.

Preparation, though, is not simply creating a script to follow come game time. It is the actual process of getting ready that prepares more than any tangible plan that might come from that preparation. As Eisenhower once said “Plans are worthless, but planning is everything.” Or, as someone once told me, “A well-prepared person expects nothing and is prepared for anything.”

As one advances to new skill levels and moves through higher and higher arenas of competition, one spends more time, proportionally, preparing than performing. This holds true as one progresses from youth sports to high school sports and on to the collegiate level. Finally, at the highest levels of competition, the amount of time spent in preparation grows to hours for each minute of game time. This is something lost on most fans. All of this preparation feeds the athlete’s ability to focus and provides the confidence needed to succeed.

Focus and preparation would be meaningless, however, without Purpose.  Purpose engenders the motivation to focus and to prepare, not just in the larger sense of purpose, on the grand scale, but also in all those day to day situations.  Life, in general and the season as a whole are not the only things that demand purpose, but each practice and each workout along the way do, too.  When asked, with all that he had accomplished in his career, what more did he still wish to accomplish, Hall of Fame bound coach Bill Belichick replied “I’d like to go out and have a good practice today. That would be at the top of the list right now.”

Which is why he is headed for the Hall of Fame.

Yesterday was my birthday. But it was not just any birthday, it was my Golden Birthday. I turned 59 years old and I was born in ’59.

I know, I know. Golden Birthdays are supposed to be when your age is the same as the day of the month of your birthday.

Those are wasted if you’re born in the first few days of the month, such as I was, on a day you do not enjoy and cannot remember.

For me, though, my Golden 59th Birthday was one I enjoyed and one I will remember. It started with a dream I had in which I was taking a nap and in my dream I awoke to find my family there and I enjoyed it so much and it felt so good just to have them around. And then, later in the day we all got together to celebrate MY birthday at dinner.

It was, literally, a dream come true.

Another good thing about my 59th birthday was that I realized so much more now than when I was three how much I have to be thankful for. My wife, my kids, my mom and dad and brother and sisters, all the people around me through the years, all the blessings and all the good fortune, most of it unearned by anything I did.

So, for this, my real Golden Birthday, I am thankful. And I’m glad it didn’t show up until I was old enough to appreciate it.

My kids, born in ’94 and ’98, have something to look forward to.

For a long time.

I’m a Roman Catholic. For Catholics and others, the Lenten season is a time of self-denial. Often Catholics give up something for Lent, with chocolate being the typical choice, it seems. This custom, like other customs, has value in it. Customs or rituals provide a framework, a familiar pattern to follow that takes us outside of our mundane every day lives and allows us to be a part of the larger community. But Lent is different in that it is personal. The idea is (or should be) for us to challenge ourselves in some way that results in us needing God’s help. The best Lent is not one in which we have persevered on our own, but one in which we have sought, and received, God’s help. That is, to pray.

So it is with fasting. A successful fast (if you can call it that) is not one of self-achievement, but one in which you seek, and are given, a helping hand.

Further, the purpose of fasting is not self-denial or self-punishment. Consider Isaiah 58:5-9.

5. “Is this the kind of fast I have chosen,
   only a day for people to humble themselves?
   Is it only for bowing one’s head like a reed
   and for lying in sackcloth and ashes?
   Is that what you call a fast,
   a day acceptable to the Lord?
6. Is not this the kind of fasting I have chosen:
   to loose the chains of injustice
   and untie the cords of the yoke,
   to set the oppressed free
   and break every yoke?
7. Is it not to share your food with the hungry
   and to provide the poor wanderer with shelter—
   when you see the naked, to clothe them,
   and not to turn away from your own flesh and blood?
8. Then your light will break forth like the dawn,
   and your healing will quickly appear;
   then your righteousness will go before you,
   and the glory of the Lord will be your rear guard.
9. Then you will call, and the Lord will answer;
   you will cry for help, and he will say: Here am I.”

Let’s take Isaiah’s words to heart this Lenten season.

P.S. This would have been Dad’s 88^th birthday. Happy Birthday Dad!

Sunday has got to be the saddest day of the week.

Why is that?

Perhaps it is because the end of Sunday marks the end of the end of the end, or at least the end of the weekend. Another week in the books, so to speak. One more week closer to the grave.

One of the saddest songs written, in my opinion, is Kris Kristofferson’s “Sunday Morning Coming Down.” It’s a poignant look at what a man can miss when he makes the wrong choices in his life.

Well I woke up Sunday morning
With no way to hold my head, that didn’t hurt
And the beer I had for breakfast wasn’t bad
So I had one more for dessert
Then I fumbled in my closet through my clothes
And found my cleanest dirty shirt
Then I washed my face and combed my hair
And stumbled down the stairs to meet the day

I’d smoked my mind the night before
With cigarettes and the songs I’d been pickin’
But I lit my first and watched a small kid
Cussin’ at a can that he was kicking
Then I walked across the street
And caught the Sunday smell of someone fryin’ chicken
And Lord, it took me back to somethin’
That I’d lost somewhere, somehow along the way

On a Sunday morning sidewalk
I’m wishing Lord that I was stoned
‘Cause there’s something in a Sunday
That makes a body feel alone
And there’s nothin’ short of dyin’
That’s half as lonesome as the sound
Of the sleepin’ city sidewalk
And Sunday mornin’ comin’ down

In the park I saw a daddy
With a laughin’ little girl that he was swingin’
And I stopped beside a Sunday school
And listened to the songs they were singin’
Then I headed down the street
And somewhere far away a lonely bell was ringin’
And it echoed through the canyon
Like the disappearin’ dreams of yesterday

Maybe it’s the look back at the week and at how life has gone up until that point and the regrets that go along with such reflection that makes Sundays so sad.

For some, perhaps it’s because the work week is about to begin and the fun times are over, I don’t know.

It brings me down just thinking about it.

What do you think?

Thinking over this whole New Year’s Resolution thing and, after talking about it with my daughter, I agreed with her that oftentimes these “resolutions” end up being too vague, too intangible, and often they either fall by the wayside or are so meaningless that they’re, well, meaningless.
What we came up with, instead, was the idea of a list, a To-Do list, if you will. It might not be original; many people, (including a friend of my daughter who suggested it to my daughter) do some variation of this, but there were a few things we liked about this idea.
First, it’s tangible. This helps so much more than the “I want to be more…” or whatever that sounds great at the outset but loses its meaning when there is no real action attached to it. Without being something you can act on, it is just an idea. An idea which gets left in the back of some closet of your memory once you have real things to deal with in your life.
Second, it’s specific. That gives you some yardstick to measure how you’re doing. It means that at the end of the year you can take an accounting of yourself and your year and either celebrate your accomplishments or dedicate yourself to doing better next time.
Third, it lets you bite off more than you can chew. A good list will include more than you can accomplish in a year. By including more than you can do, you will reach further and do more than you would do with a safe or reasonable list. Sure, you have some undone things still on your list, but the list of things youhave accomplished will be all that much longer.
After all, as I have often said, it is not who you are or what you are or where you are or where you’ve been that are important. It is what you do that is important.
So, with that, here is my list of 2018 accomplishments I am shooting for (in no particular order):

• Send a book manuscript out for publication.
• Run a half marathon (I ran a marathon once, but that was a long time ago. Basically, I’m starting out fresh.)
• Travel to Italy. (My sister and I had planned to go and I have not done anything tangible toward that. Not yet.)
• Read the Book of Isaiah.
• Resurrect the St. Raphael’s Thanksgiving dinner at St. Martin’s Parish on North Capitol Street in D.C. This was one of my family’s favorite things to do, to help out with the Thanksgiving meal at the church and to distribute dinners to those who could not get out to the church. It lapsed into inactivity because the coordinators were not able to continue and no suitable replacement leaders volunteered. They need someone to step up. I can do that.
• Learn to paint watercolors.

Ok. So that’s my list, at least for the momoent. I just now started it so there might be more things to add once I have had a chance to think about it a bit.