We're always striving to be better everyday at each and everything we do. We seek to be a better person, more kind and compassionate, each and everyday. We want to learn or discover something as a student, each and everyday. We want to be a better tennis player, by coming closer to mastering some part of our game, in my classroom, the tennis court, each and everyday.
Striving for improvement on our tennis skills in practice will carry over to the court during matches. You will gain satisfaction and new found confidence to attempt such skills under the pressures of match play. With each repition of any given stroke that you perform in practice you'll improve that specific skill. Think how many times this happens during our tennis practice and match play each and everyday. Its an opportunity your presented with so many times each and everyday.
Success on the tennis court and classroom doesn't always have to have a number or a score attached to it. Its your satisfaction as its also your courage that is enhanced each and every time you try and hit a tennis ball. This courage carries over to everything else in your life. I promise it can carry over to the classroom.
I think back to the two quotes I started in the cold of February here on this blog, noted in John Wooden's Pyramid of Success. The Pyramid and the life lessons contained in it, is how I have approached my classroom, the tennis court, each and everyday. Click on the picture below to read them again. Its one of the most widely accepted models/guides for success in academia, sports and business.
"Success is the peace of mind which is the direct result of the self satisfaction in knowing that you made the effort to become the best that you were capable."
"Little things make the big things happen."
We worked on all the little aspects of our game, and as we do everyday. As all these moments of working on various strokes have added up and we arrive at a successful season, a 12-3 record. Our attempt to reach our pre-season goal, a very short distance away. But really our success isn't solely measured in that 12-3 mark, right?
Our preparation and our courage to try to reach this goal and please don't ever forget that it is irrelevant if we win or lose. The winning will find a way to take care of itself in some way, shape or form. If we as individuals are satisfied and believe that we did all that we were capable of ... to be the best that we could be. Then that bus ride home will be a beautiful one. Really my sole expectation of you this entire time is that in a nutshell, to act as such in practice and matches.
Enjoy this famous poem(video below) by Kipling, "If," read by Roger Federer and Rafael Nadal. Its words, in huge type face, meet each and every person who enters the members and players entrance at Wimbledon.
Its message is about the courage it takes to try and win and to try and fail. Really the courage to be yourself no matter what the outcome of the match. 'If' is also about the courage to accept the challenge of the tennis match and to then trust and measure one's self during and after the match no matter what the result. This is a life poem as much as it is the most famous poem attached to Wimbledon and the sport of tennis.
Watch Roger and Rafa read this most famous poem. Than read "If," as copied below. Maybe read it before you watch the video. It is a beautiful poem and deserves to be fully digested again and again, just like Wooden's masterpiece above. Please refer back to the poem sometime on Sunday night or Monday morning. For the next few days I'll just put poems up, and some pictures I've saved.
Rudyard Kipling
If
If you can keep your head when all about you
Are losing theirs and blaming it on you;
If you can trust yourself when all men doubt you,
But make allowance for their doubting too;
If you can wait and not be tired by waiting,
Or, being lied about, don't deal in lies,
Or, being hated, don't give way to hating,
And yet don't look too good, nor talk too wise;
If you can dream - and not make dreams your master;
If you can think - and not make thoughts your aim;
If you can meet with triumph and disaster
And treat those two imposters just the same;
If you can bear to hear the truth you've spoken
Twisted by knaves to make a trap for fools,
Or watch the things you gave your life to broken,
And stoop and build 'em up with wornout tools;
If you can make one heap of all your winnings
And risk it on one turn of pitch-and-toss,
And lose, and start again at your beginnings
And never breath a word about your loss;
If you can force your heart and nerve and sinew
To serve your turn long after they are gone,
And so hold on when there is nothing in you
Except the Will which says to them: "Hold on";
If you can talk with crowds and keep your virtue,
Or walk with kings - nor lose the common touch;
If neither foes nor loving friends can hurt you;
If all men count with you, but none too much;
If you can fill the unforgiving minute
With sixty seconds' worth of distance run -
Yours is the Earth and everything that's in it,
And - which is more - you'll be a Man my son!
