Don't Count Your Chickens Before They Hatch

Last week the Utah Jazz won two of two playoff games against the Houston Rockets in Houston. All of a sudden Utah newscasters were predicting that it would be a sweep. That truly surprised me if they had been watching the games. Although the Jazz won both games, both games were extremely close. Also, both teams looked pretty equal. Therefore, either team could possibly win on any given night.
The Jazz team members actually realized this--At least, much better than the media did. So it was the media that had egg on its face when the Jazz lost to the Rockets last night in the first game in Utah.
The lesson to be learned from this is that we can never assume that we have arrived when we still have a long road to travel to arrive at a desired destination.

Learning From the Athletes

In a BYU Devotional speech on May 23, 1995 Larry Echohawk, a professor of law at BYU, told of a great lesson he learned from LaVell Edwards, his BYU football coach. Edwards would tell the team, "The most important thing to success is not the will to win. The most important thing to success is the will to prepare." Edwards taught his football players that they needed to work as hard as they could Monday through Friday so that when they showed up in uniform on Saturday they would be prepared to win.

Even though Ronnie Price, a Utah Jazz player, wasn't one of Edwards's BYU football players, he, too, has learned that lesson. He is Jazz's third-string point guard, who averages less than four minutes a game. Even though his minutes on the court aren't many, when he's out there he gives it all he has and has given the Jazz a needed boost more than once. "It's not about impressing anyone. It's about being a professional and having to my job when my name is called."

Price added, "...watching the game never hurts, especially when you're watching good players. I'm fortunate to have an All-Star point guard in front of me and also a great leadership guy also in front of me with Jason Hart and Deron Williams."

There are some important lessons to learn from Edwards and Price when we're feeling underused and underwhelmed:

• Continue to prepare for the "game," so that when the opportunity presents itself to "play," we'll be prepared to make a contribution.
• When we are called upon to make a contribution, give it the best we can no matter how small the contribution appears to be. "Give what you have--it may be more than you dare to think."
• Don't stand around waiting for accolades. I have a favorite quote that says, "Give the best you have and then go on without waiting for a response." If we stand around waiting for a response, we miss opportunities to give more.
• Find good "players" to watch and learn from them.

Cornell West Insights --Part 2

"We are all on the same ship, and that ship has leaks in it. We must all stick together, or we will all fall apart, for we are inextricably linked together."

"While the unexamined life is not worth living, the examined life is a necessarily painful one to lead."

"What does it mean to be human? To be human is to suffer, to shudder in the face of life's mysteries and to struggle with that mystery."

West quotes William Butler Yeats who said, "it takes more courage to dig deep into the abyss of one's own soul than it takes for a soldier to fight on the battlefield."

"Teachers must forge a courage in themselves and attempt to make it contagious with their students to move from learning that is too hollow, too shallow, too quantitative, too standard-oriented."

"Lack of democracy: voicelessness. Democratic reality: a sense of being an agent in the world.

"West quotes Emerson as saying that all forms of imitation are suicide. Therefore, each must find his or her own distinctive voice and practice it and "bounce it up against other voices within the community like a jazz quartet."