Focus on Connecting Until Success

I heard a restaurant success story today.

A woman with two young children started a restaurant.

She toiled. She struggled. She even slept on two bar stools put together while piecing the venture together. She enjoyed the suffering of the journey. With hard work, the restaurant opened and succeeded.

She proceeded to open up a large second restaurant with banquet hall. The banquet hall did not do as well as she imagined. Several employees recommended making the banquet hall food ethnic, and offering it as a third restaurant. This simple change caused the banquet hall, now the third restaurant to succeed.

The owner cared about the employees and even drove one home without a car to a neighboring town. And it was this young employee who eventually became the Restaurant’s most long-standing, loyal, and experienced employee.

Restaurant success requires being ready, willing and able to struggle beyond the ordinary. When the leader leads by example and goes above and beyond expectations, they are setting the precedent and pathway for others to follow. No matter what the industry, this is American success.

Lets look out for others and bounce back together. Lets work closer with friends, family and community. Lets engage, connect, have fun, and progress together more with others.

Lets act as if we are in the shoes of the person we connect with.
Lets recall what it was like to have less perspective and less wealth than we presently have.
Lets acknowledge that much of the experience was wonderful.

If a single dollar bill has strong meaning to you today because you lack dollar bills in the bank, I suggest you write out a check for a Million Dollars to yourself and Act as if you have the Million for the day. Write down your feelings at the end of the day. Did those feelings cause you to connect, have fun and look out more with others?

If a dollar has very little meaning to you because you have tons of income or money in the bank, I suggest you write a check out for an amount that slightly exceeds your entire bank balance, make it out to “The United States of America” and leave it in a drawer for the day. By acting as if you have no money, perhaps you will experience greater appreciation for everything that occurs around you for the day, whether its leaves falling off trees or appreciating the frustration or joys of others around you.

Lets appreciate how much the college student, the person of color, or the worker wearing the Chevrolet Hat, the Philadelphia Eagles Jersey or the American employee wearing the NASA jacket enjoy the coffee they are drinking or the task they are participating in. If you open your heart and mind, you will become aware that their Joy is your Joy and their frustration is yours. The joy of bouncing back is the dream. A bank account with a fixed amount of money there whether its high or low is no dream.

A dream is trust and confidence in character and the American way of life. Ignorance may be no excuse for the law but when you openly engage others more and less wise as you on a level playing field (IE: with a real feeling of the same economic and social levels), the experience is bliss. I challenge you to act as if you are in the others (hopefully smiling) persons shoes. If they have reason to smile, so will you.

It is only when you engage others with open focus, that we can recognize that everyone (whether a citizen or not) living in America needs to support and engage each other to have the best quality of life and make the greatest progress.

Of course the auto and financial industries can improve and do better; I’m willing to bounce back with them. Yes, there are more accountable ways to measure performance to ensure everyone with a loan or asset relief is striving to be the best and looking out for others. Coasting and/or omitting to take action by leadership is no solution. If a friend with character and America’s best interests in mind needs a loan, I say provide it. We must believe in ourselves.

“Character cannot be developed in ease and quiet. Only through experience of trial and suffering
can the soul be strengthened, vision cleared, ambition inspired, and success achieved.”
-Helen Keller;

“But rules cannot substitute for character”. -Alan Greenspan

I cannot imagine an America without trucks like the Chevy Silverado. Americans may presently rely on others for oil, but do we want to become reliant on others for production of vehicles too? The Republicans ran on a “Country First” platform, yet in this article, Republican Richard Shelby, the ranking member of the Senate banking committee, is quoted as saying that “the government would be throwing good money after bad. It would only be postponing the inevitable.”

The Right way to talk about America Mr. Shelby is to encourage people to look out for others.

If America leadership cannot place Money, Trust and Confidence in building Quality vehicles or financial institutions in our own Country, then the only thing inevitable is throwing good money in the form of taxes after bad leadership. The joy and mystery of the bounce back can and must be done in a convincing bi-partisan fashion with agreement by all. Anything less than clear and convincing belief in American Principles and American Solutions is not leadership.

The final way of putting it is this. If someone living in America collapses at an American Auto Dealership, we do not hesitate to pick them up. Lets come together and do the same for entities in need and return joy and belief in who we are.

One of my students parents provided feedback after one of my group tennis lessons. He said, nice job — you really “engage” your students. Motivated students can read and learn about many subjects. The real challenge is finding a way to engage people in all areas of education and life. It is when talk to each other, are made aware of challenges, and engage in finding and implementing solutions that we have participatory democracy. If your job has become simply a paycheck, try becoming aware of how it became that way, and engage others to solve issues. Your effort affects others and their effort affects you. Engage means to attract, and involve the attention of others. No Child Left Behind does not help the million plus children who drop out of school every year.

22 year old Champion Matthew Hilton was 29-0 prior to facing Robert Bam Bam Hines

Autographed photograph of Robert Bam Bam Hines with his prediction “The Next Champ”.

One way to deal with information overload is to manage it. You can become efficient by yourself, but you can be much more efficient with others.

I had the pleasure of speaking with Eric Dolaway, the Education Director at the Arthur Ashe Youth Tennis and Education in Philadelphia this week. The mission of the Center is “to create and promote opportunities to improve the quality of life of young people through tennis and education.” Eric mentioned that one of their Community Building Components is working with First Serve.

The Arthur Ashe Tennis and Education Facility is relatively new and one of the nicest indoor facilities I have seen. Beyond the 8 indoor and 8 outdoor tennis courts, it has a library, indoor gym, pro shop, and computer room. It is a destination for children to work on homework. The facility has so many books in its library to lend out, Eric said they do not object if children take books home long term if not permanently. That is what I call fighting abundance of information with abundance of early education.

If Ashe were alive today he would wonder why there weren’t more facilities like this. The facility helps expose thousands of children to tennis and life skills each year throughout Philadelphia. Simply through word of mouth, over time they have additionally developed day time programs that serve autistic children from several school districts. Children can start playing at age 4 and continue through adulthood and the facility has several nationally ranked players.

The facility has outstanding student art in the hallways, mixes people of all ethnic and economic backgrounds and provides the means for friendships and lifetime networking. If people can agree that when everything else is even, psychology determines the outcome, then this is a facility and safe haven for others to follow and model themselves after. Staff, parents and children all look out for each other here.

If entities like Ashe can work together with other facilities through entities like First Serve to expand offerings and help bring more satellite facilities to reality, this is the strongest team-oriented solution I’ve seen to empower youth with skills, values and experience for success in life. The strongest offense is the best defense, and the defense of our youth’s character is the priceless gift we can develop to overcome any future challenge.

If teamwork is as simple as picking up tennis balls together as opposed to individually, we must do more to develop the character of our youth to ensure they are all making their best effort. This is the performance the Country needs.

A vigilant University Coach asked his players, “Who do you Play for”. His players said the “University”.

The coach proceeded to make the players run for 5 hours until each one of them was sick to their stomach. He asked them again “Who do you Play for?” The wise student said “The United States”.

He got it.

I recently scanned over a 15 year old bloggers list of websites that he said he followed on a daily basis (there were 20+ on the list) and the first thought that came to my mind was information overload.

One of the dangers of the digital age is information overload. People have asked me about the experience and productivity of automation, selling online and using social networking sites such as facebook and twitter. While the internet has made tremendous strides forward, and the potential now for greater connectivity is expanding, the productivity of society will continue to be impacted until the best aspects of social networking are reaped and narrowly defined to ensure greater positive results. Positive results should be visually seen and documented. As an example, when teaching a student a tennis lesson to hit a forehand, it is relatively easy to overload the student with information causing the student to struggle and fail to hit the ball.

However, it is when the teacher advises the student to stop struggling, discard all of the information provided, “let it happen”, or “try not to try” that the student will often exhibit their best performance. This is also called “effortless effort”. Most teachers understand that feeding students with continuous streams of information will confuse and interfere with performance.

According to Wikipedia, in 2005, research firm “Basex” calculated the cost of unnecessary interruptions and related recovery time at “$588 billion” per annum in the U.S. alone. That figure was updated to “$650 billion” in early 2007.

There are many other negative effects caused by information overload. Alvin Toffler who is a futurologist studied the negative and psychological effects of information overload. According to Toffler, information overload will lead to ‘future shock syndrome’ as an individual will suffer severe physical and mental disturbances. The world is moving so fast into technology and with the help of information; everything in the world seems to be multiplying which makes people prone to helplessness and inadequacy.

When developing services, design them in a way that helps users manage information overload effectively, and productively. Getting more of society into “the zone” will allow us to achieve like never before. Remember Pele, the great soccer player’s description of the zone:

“I felt a strange calmness.. . a kind of euphoria. I felt I could run all day without tiring, that I could dribble through any of their team or all of them, that I could almost pass through them physically.”

The services that lead us to feelings of greater adequacy, helpfulness, productivity and quality of life deserve to dribble us forward.

I have never done immersion swimming but always advised students to visualize a fish moving through water and mimic that style of movement on the tennis court. If you have an opportunity, visit the Mystic Acquarium and watch the Sea Lion show in the Immersion Theater. It is a spectacle to see a Sea Lion move through water smoothly and walk on land with grace.

With inspirational demo video’s like the one above (look how smooth and straight he is swimming), along with greater studies on the benefits of cross-training with total immersion swimming, we will achieve like never before. It’s about channeling your focus on awareness on movement as opposed to power of the stroke.

From the Wikipedia: “Total Immersion swimmers focus on swimming as a mindful practice done in the spirit of yoga or tai chi, rather than the endurance-and-power-focused workouts done by competitive swimmers. The aim is to become more self-aware and to feel “one with the water.”

In sports, the term purist is often used to refer to a fan of a sport who dislikes recent innovations or changes in rules of the sport.

When I watched the 2008 Australian Open tennis tournament earlier this year I felt the replay feature had impacted the natural beauty and flow of the game. Instant replay was introduced to improve accurate line-calls so that a player would have recourse in the event of a bad line-call that could cause the player to lose a match. I felt use of the system beyond that was distracting. The closer the industry can design it to be “No Impact” instant replay, the better it will be for everyone.

In baseball, the game was considered “pure” prior to 1920, when home runs were a rarity and base running, hit and run, and other station-to-station tactics were the norm.

In the Australian Open, I saw a player ask for replays on shots that were not close to being out. In some respects I have always enjoyed watching tennis in its pure form (without replay) because that is what 99% of the population is able to play themselves. As children model themselves after the professionals, tennis needs to ensure its audience receives a consistent message that the replay feature is being used to ensure the accuracy and judgment of line calls. Even if we trust our opponent, it is a benefit to have systems and procedures in place that insure accurate judgment. Even the replay can be wrong so we must appreciate that nothing is perfect. The replay system is the best tennis accountability mechanism we have. Its purpose is to keep officials striving to improve and do their best. We all appreciate we wouldn’t want mistakes to determine the outcome of a match.

A summary of the challenges at the Australian Open are at this link here. The number of overturned calls for the Men was 40% and 30% overturned for the women. I wonder how many many of these “correct” challenges changed the outcome of the match. And how many players asked for a challenge just to throw off their opponents momentum and obtain a few extra seconds of rest?

When we make changes, we must maintain purism. Purism in sports and life is important in that it shows we have an inherent trust and confidence in the rules of the game and in players, umpires and fans.

The internet offers many tools that allow us to work together. The question remains how society will measure the productivity of teamwork and collective intelligence? If you work alone, connect with someone else who compliments your skill set. If anyone has practical experience and/or article links about measuring and maximizing collective intelligence, please email me. Thanks for reading!