Character, Passion, Sports

Chris Cobetto demonstrates the driving line at Virginia International Raceway

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Chris Cobetto is a buddy of mine from High School. We where roommates our senior year at The Kiski School.  Chris had die-cast models of race cars in his room back then…now he plays with some bigger toys.  Chris, now President of National Auto Sports Association (NASA) Mid-Atlantic, runs more than a dozen races, High Performance Driving Education (HPDE) and Autocross.

Although we’re not in touch near as much as I’d like, I have a tremendous amount of respect for his commitment.  Chris lives his passion.  Take a quick drive with him around the track at VIR.

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Character, Dreams, Effectiveness, Focus, Self-Discipline, Sports

Pittsburgh Steelers Achieve Victory With Heart

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 Character, selflessness and focus
are the reasons
that the Pittsburgh Steelers are Super Bowl Champions. 
Steelers Super Bowl XLIII super-bowl-trophy

Coach Tomlin:

“…The standard is the standard. We don’t choose to point fingers. We
stay humble in times of excellence, and achievements individually are part of a team. By the same token we don’t point the fingers as members of the team. The issue has been, is and hopefully will continue to be winning in this game indefinitely for the Pittsburgh Steelers. That’s where the focus is. We care less how others may judge portions of our football team or portions of our football game and are more concerned about the final outcome, which is having one more point than our opponent…”
 

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Character, Folsom, California, Sports

Random Steeeler Fan

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Awhile a back I had made a friend, Steve, watching Steeler Football.  I’m from Pittsburgh and a lifetime fan.  Out "Steeler spot" closed.  It was a popular gathering place for many Pittsburgh Steeler Pittsburgh_steelersloyal.  This particular acquaintance and I met somewhere new – Yagers in Folsom – to catch the season opener today against the Houston Texans.  The doors were locked, nobody home at Yagers.  Steve, thinking quickly called a neighbor friend that he knoew was hooking up the game in his garage.  Watching the game in lawn chairs in our new friend’s garage.  Do you love it?  It was a great time.  And a cool coming together as Pittsburgh fans do – with nothing in common but a love and loyalty for a hometown and it’s much beloved team. 

P.S. The owner of the restaurant and bar were sorry to have missed us.  You bet we’re going to see if this can be the new Steeler spot.  We’ll see if they can get some breakfast going for us Pacifc time zone fans.

 

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Dreams, Effectiveness, Principles, Sports, Vision, visualization

Stitches On The Baseball: You Must Have Vision

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Baseball close up, pitcher in background representing character quality of vision The top ten hitters in Major League Baseball today have batting averages between .310 and .345.  They also have to average about three times at bat per game.  That means that the best of the best players (at bat) of our National pastime are successful at bat around 30% of the time, AND, they get a hit slightly less than once per game, on average.  It’s also said that a great hitter can slow down the ball in his mind, sometimes able to see the stitching on the ball, and therefore, the ball’s rotation.  Wow! Now that’s great vision!

Acting out of principle day-to-day takes the vision to see the outcome before you get there.  Often the better road is the harder one. The best of the best are still “failing” at the plate most of the time they’re there.  You have to visualize and you have to get up to bat.

I have had a number of recent reminders about the importance of being able to visualize your future.  Seeing where you are going in your imagination, FIRST, creates the belief that you will get there.

It’s harder than it sounds isn’t it?  You have to force yourself to schedule time to do just that  – dream – create the picture in your mind and connect your dream to what you do.

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Books, Character, leadership, Sports

Leadership Quality #1

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Dr. John C. Maxwell is a favorite author of mine.  His philosophy that “everything rises and falls on leadership”
motivates his every endeavor to help individuals reach their highest
potential.  He has communicated his leadership principles to Fortune 500
companies, the United States Military Academy at West Point, and sports
organizations such as the NCAA, the NBA, and the NFL.

In his book, "The 21 Indispensable Qualities of A Leader" he begins by asking if you have what it takes to be a great leader, the kind that attracts people and makes things happen.  The #1 and First Quality is Character.

The short chapter has many concrete points to ponder, study and hopefully live by…but perhaps I can provide two that resonated with me this morning.

  1.     "How a leader deals with the circumstances of life tells you many things about his character.  Crisis doesn’t necessarily make character but it certainly does reveal it.  Adversity is a crossroads that makes a person choose one of two paths: character or compromise.  Every time he chooses character, he becomes stronger, even if that choice brings negative consequence."

  2.     "A man took his young daughter to a carnival, and she immediately ran over to a booth and asked for cotton candy.  As the attendant handed her a huge ball of it, the father asked, "Sweetheart, are you sure you can eat all that?"

    "Don’t worry Dad," she answered, "I’m a lot bigger on the inside than on the outside."

That’s what real character is – being bigger on the inside.

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