Wooden: A Lifetime of Observations and Reflections On and Off the Court By John Wooden 

PART I FAMILIES, VALUES, VIRTUES I am just a common man who is true to his beliefs. —JOHN WOODEN

• It took me a long time to understand that even a stubborn mule responds to gentleness.
• Each day my mother demonstrated great patience and the ability and eagerness to work very hard without complaint.
• I learned from her what hard work really means and that it’s part of life. Hard work comes with the territory. She always knew what had to be done and she did it. Mother provided a model for how to do my job regardless of the particular circumstances.
• Being a role model is the most powerful form of education educating. Youngsters need good models more than they need critics. It is one of a parent’s greatest responsibilities and opportunities. Too often fathers neglect it because they get so caught up in making a living they forget to make a life.

Two Sets of Threes 

• My father had what he called his “two sets of threes.”
  • Never lie. Never cheat. Never steal.
  • Don’t whine. Don’t complain. Don’t make excuses.

Dad’s Creed 

• Dad had written out his creed. At the top of the paper, it said: “Seven Things to Do.” It read as follows: 
  • 1. Be true to yourself. 
  • 2. Help others. 
  • 3. Make each day your masterpiece. 
  • 4. Drink deeply from good books, especially the Bible. 
  • 5. Make friendship a fine art. 
  • 6. Build a shelter against a rainy day. 
  • 7. Pray for guidance and count and give thanks for your blessings every day.

All he said when he gave me the little note he had written was, “Son, try and live up to these things.”

 

Be True to Yourself If we are not true to ourselves, we cannot be true to others— As Polonius said to his son Laertes in William Shakespeare’s Hamlet, “This above all: to thine own self be true, and it must follow, as the night the day, thou canst not then be false to any man.”

 

• You must know who you are and be true to who you are if you are going to be who you can and should become. You must have the courage to be true to yourself.
• Help Others Oh, the great joy there is in helping others, perhaps the greatest joy! You cannot have a perfect day without helping others with no thought of getting something in return.

Make Each Day Your Masterpiece

• Too often we get distracted by what is outside our control. You can’t do anything about yesterday. The door to the past has been shut and the key is thrown away. You can do nothing about tomorrow. It is yet to come. However, tomorrow is in large part determined by what you do today. So make today a masterpiece. You have control over that.

“Don’t think you can make up for it by working twice as hard tomorrow. If you have it within your 

Friendship

• Someone is not a good friend because he or she does good things for you all the time. It’s friendship when you do good things for each other.
• The first and most important step in friendship is being a friend. Build a Shelter.

 

So often we fail to acknowledge what we have because we’re so concerned about what we want. We fail to give real thanks for the many blessings for which we did nothing: our life itself, the flowers, the trees, our family and friends. This moment. All of our blessings we take for granted so much of the time.

• A wise person once observed, “How much more pleasant this world would be if we magnified our blessings the way we magnify our disappointments.”
• I am not what I ought to be, Not what I want to be, Not what I am going to be, But I am thankful that I am better than I used to be.

Give It Away to Get It Back 

• There is a wonderful, almost mystical, the law of nature that says three of the things we want most—happiness, freedom, and peace of mind—are always attained when we give them to others.

Six of Life’s Puzzlers 

• Why is it easier to criticize than to compliment? 
• Why is it easier to give others blame than to give them credit? 
• Why is it that so many who are quick to make suggestions find it so difficult to make decisions? 
• Why can’t we realize that it only weakens those we want to help when we do things for them that they should do for themselves? 
• Why is it so much easier to allow emotions rather than a reason to control our decisions? 
• Why does the person with the least to say usually take the longest to say it?

 

“Never believe you’re better than anybody else, but remember that you’re just as good as everybody else.” That’s important: No better, but just as good!

Marriage

• Folks think Nellie and I had a perfect marriage, but it was because we worked at it. There are rough patches in any marriage. Very early we understood that there would be times when we disagreed but there would never be times when we had to be disagreeable. We kept to that rule for over half a century. Nellie and I have a great love for one another, but we understood that even love takes some work.
• Love means many things. It means giving. It means sharing. It means forgiving. It means understanding. It means being patient. It means learning. And you must always consider the other side, the other person. You can give without loving, but you cannot love without giving.
• I agree with Abraham Lincoln. He once said that the best thing a man can do for his children is to love their mother.

“You must be interested in finding the best way, not in having your own way.” The same is true in marriage. Don’t be stubborn and insist on having your own way. Look to find a way that works for both of you.

A Parent Talks to a Child Before the First Game

“This is your first game, my child. I hope you win.

I hope you win for your sake, not mine. Because winning’s nice.

It’s a good feeling.

Like the whole world is yours.

But, it passes, this feeling.

And what lasts is what you’ve learned.

 

And what you learn about is life.

That’s what sports is all about. Life.

The whole thing is played out in an afternoon.

The happiness of life.

The miseries.

The joys.

The heartbreaks.

 

There’s no telling what’ll turn up.

There’s no telling whether they’ll toss you out in the first five minutes or whether you’ll stay for the long haul.

 

There’s no telling how you’ll do.

You might be a hero or you might be absolutely nothing.

There’s just no telling.

Too much depends on chance.

On how the ball bounces.

 

I’m not talking about the game, my child.

I’m talking about life.

But, it’s life that the game is all about.

Just as I said.

 

Because every game is life.

And life is a game.

A serious game

Dead serious.

 

But, that’s what you do with serious things. You do your best.

You take what comes.

You take what comes

And you run with it.

 

Winning is fun.

Sure.

But winning is not the point.

 

Wanting to win is the point.

Not giving up is the point.

Never being satisfied with what you’ve done is the point.

Never letting up is the point.

Never letting anyone down is the point.

 

Play to win.

Sure.

But lose like a champion.

Because it’s not winning that counts.

What counts is trying.” -Unknown

You Are More Influential than You Think

• Commend, Don’t Criticize When a child does something well, commendation is a powerful tool. One of the most powerful motivational tools you can use is the pat on the back. Yes, occasionally the pat must be a little lower and a little harder, but too often parents neglect the praise. They are quick to criticize and slow to commend.
• “No written word nor spoken plea Can teach our youth what they should be. Nor all the books on all the shelves. It’s what the teachers are themselves.” —Unknown

 

Character 

• Be more concerned with your character than your reputation. Character is what you really are. Reputation is what people say you are.

 

The Fundamental Goal 

• The goal in life is just the same as in basketball: make the effort to do the best you are capable of doing—in marriage, at your job, in the community, for your country. Make the effort to contribute in whatever way you can. You may do it materially or with time, ideas, or work. Making the effort to contribute is what counts. The effort is what counts in everything.

Perfection

• Perfection is what you are striving for, but perfection is an impossibility. However, striving for perfection is not an impossibility. Do the best you can under the conditions that exist. That is what counts.
• We didn’t reach perfection, but we constantly strove toward it.

 

Learn Forever, Die Tomorrow 

• Early on I came to believe that you should learn as if you were going to live forever, and live as if you were going to die tomorrow.
• Always be learning, acquiring knowledge, and seeking wisdom with a sense that you are immortal and that you will need much knowledge and wisdom for that long journey ahead. Know that when you are through learning, you are through.
• But I want to live that life as if I were going to die tomorrow: with relish, immediacy, and the right priorities. I also will not waste even a minute.

How hard you work at correcting your faults reveals your character.

It’s so true. You often find what you’re looking for.

• Why is it so hard for so many to realize that winners are usually the ones who work harder, work longer, and as a result, perform better? 
• Why are there so many who want to build up the weak by tearing down the strong? 
• Why is it that so many non attainers are quick to criticize, question, and belittle the attainers? 
• Why is it so hard for us to understand that we cannot antagonize and positively influence at the same time? 
• Why is it so much easier to complain about the things we do not have than to make the most of and appreciate the things we do have?

The young must remember that all good and worthwhile things take time (and that is exactly as it should be). Their elders must remember that although not all change is progress, all progress is the result of the change (and to resist or fear change is often to get in the way of progress).

Six Ways to Bring Out the Best in People 

1. Keep courtesy and consideration for others foremost in your mind, at home and away. 
2. Try to have fun without trying to be funny. 
3. While you can’t control what happens to you, you can control how you react. Make good manners an automatic reaction. 
4. Seek individual opportunities to offer a genuine compliment. 
5. Remember that sincerity, optimism, and enthusiasm are more welcome than sarcasm, pessimism, and laziness. 
6. Laugh with others, never at them.

“I have prepared for death all of my life by the life I lived.” Socrates was at peace with himself.

 

PART II SUCCESS, ACHIEVEMENT, COMPETITION 

Try not to become a man of success but rather try to become a man of value. —ALBERT EINSTEIN

• • Try your hardest in all ways and you are a success. Period. Do less than that and you have failed to one degree or another.
  • Preparation Is the Prize Cervantes wrote, “The journey is better than the inn.” He is right and that is why I derived my greatest satisfaction out of the preparation—the “journey”—day after day, week after week, year after year. Your journey is the important thing. A score, a trophy, a ribbon is simply the inn.

• A Successful Journey Is a Destination

• You must also realize that this goal will be simply a by-product of all the hard work and good thinking you do along the way—your preparation. Preparation is where success is truly found.
• Set your compass in a chosen direction and then focus your attention and efforts completely on the journey of preparation. A successful journey becomes your destination and is where your real accomplishment lies.
• We may have lost games. But we had no failures. You never fail if you know in your heart that you did the best of which you are capable. I did my best. That is all I could do.
• I told my players many times, “Failing to prepare is preparing to fail.” If you prepare properly, you may be outscored but you will never lose.
• You always win when you make the full effort to do the best of which you’re capable. I also know that only one person on earth knows if you made your best effort: not your coach, not your employer, not your husband or wife, boyfriend or girlfriend, brother or sister. The only person who knows is you. You can fool everyone else.
• Learn from the past, don’t live in the past. The infection of success can lead you to live in the past, to believe that what happened before is automatically going to happen again. When that occurs you have been infected by success.

You have control only over the present, right now.

The Opinion of Others 

• Do not become too concerned about what others may think of you. Be very concerned about what you think of yourself.
• Things don’t always work out. It’s also true in life. Does worrying about it, complaining about it, change it? Nope, it just wastes your time. And if you complain about it to other people, you’re also wasting their time. Nothing is gained by wasting all of that time.

The Realistic Optimist 

• I believe one of my strengths is my ability to keep negative thoughts out. I am an optimist. I believe this results from the fact that I set realistic goals—ones that are difficult to achieve but within reach. You might say I’m a realistic optimist.

Details Create Success

• I believe in the basics: attention to, and perfection of, tiny details that might commonly be overlooked. They may seem trivial, perhaps even laughable to those who don’t understand, but they aren’t. They are fundamental to your progress in basketball, business, and life. They are the difference between champions and near champions.
• When you see a successful individual, a champion, a “winner,” you can be very sure that you are looking at an individual who pays great attention to the perfection of minor details.
• I never dreamed about winning a national championship. It happened before I even thought it was possible. What I was dreaming about each year, if you want to call it that, was trying to produce the best basketball team we could be.
• My thoughts were directed toward preparation, our journey, not the results of the effort (such as winning national championships). That would simply have shifted my attention to the wrong area, hoping for something out of my control. Hoping doesn’t make it happen.
• Understand there is a price to be paid for achieving anything of significance. You must be willing to pay the price.
• But there is great joy and satisfaction in competing against an opponent who forces you to dig deep and produce your best. That is the only way to get real joy out of the competition itself. The worthy opponent brings out the very best in you. This is thrilling.

“Show me what you can do, don’t tell me what you can do.”

 

Peace of Mind 

• Without peace of mind, what do you have? Many people go through life unhappy with what they have regardless of how much they have. No matter how much they accumulate, they never achieve peace of mind because they want more. It never ends for them and they are forever unhappy. Usually, it’s a result of comparing themselves to others, of trying to keep up with the Joneses.
• Did I find peace of mind by winning a national championship in basketball in 1964? Then a second, a third, a fourth, and so on? No. I had my peace of mind as a coach long before a national championship was ever won.

Circle What You Are 

• Take a moment and draw a circle around the following personal characteristics that you possess: confidence, poise, imagination, initiative, tolerance, humility, love, cheerfulness, faith, enthusiasm, courage, honesty, serenity. I hope you circled them all because all are within each of us. It is simply up to us to bring them out.

The Biggest Change of All 

• Perhaps you fret and think you can’t make a difference in the way things are. Wrong. You can make the biggest difference of all. You can change yourself. And when you do that you become a very powerful and important force— namely, a good role model. I believe you can do more good by being good than in any other way.

 

Eight Suggestions for Succeeding 

1. Fear no opponent. Respect every opponent. 
2. Remember, it’s the perfection of the smallest details that make big things happen. 
3. Keep in mind that hustle makes up for many a mistake. 
4. Be more interested in character than reputation. 
5. Be quick, but don’t hurry. 
6. Understand that the harder you work, the more luck you will have. 
7. Know that valid self-analysis is crucial for improvement. 
8. Remember that there is no substitute for hard work and careful planning. Failing to prepare is preparing to fail.

Winners Make the Most Mistakes

Nine Promises That Can Bring Happiness 

1. Promise yourself that you will talk about health, happiness, and prosperity as often as possible. 
2. Promise yourself to make all your friends know there is something in them that is special and that you value. 
3. Promise to think only of the best, to work only for the best, and to expect only the best in yourself and others. 
4. Promise to be just as enthusiastic about the success of others as you are about your own. 
5. Promise yourself to be so strong that nothing can disturb your peace of mind. 
6. Promise to forget the mistakes of the past and press on to greater achievements in the future. 
7. Promise to wear a cheerful appearance at all times and give every person you meet a smile. 
8. Promise to give so much time to improving yourself that you have no time to criticize others. 
9. Promise to be too large for worry, too noble for anger, too strong for fear, and too happy to permit trouble to press on you.

Recognizing a Champion 

• You are in the presence of a true competitor when you observe that he or she is indeed getting the most joy out of the most difficult circumstances. The real competitors love a tough situation. That’s when they focus better and function better. At moments of maximum pressure, they want the ball.

Being Too Competitive 

• Competitiveness must be focused exclusively on the process of what you are doing rather than the result of that effort (the so-called winning or losing). Otherwise, you may lose self-control and become tight emotionally, mentally, and physically. I think someone who is too competitive as an individual is overly worried about the final score. Therefore, I never mentioned winning or victory to my players. I never referred to “beating” an opponent.
• Instead, I constantly urged them to strive for the self-satisfaction that always comes from knowing you did the best you could to become the best of which you are capable. That’s what I wanted: the total effort. That was the measurement I used, never the final score.
• Adversity often produces unexpected opportunities. Look for it. Appreciate and utilize it. This is difficult to do if you’re feeling sorry for yourself because you’re faced with adversity.

There are no shortcuts. If you’re working on finding a shortcut, the easy way, you’re not working hard enough on the fundamentals.

Act Quickly (But Don’t Hurry) 

• When you hurry, you tend to make mistakes. On the other hand, if you can’t execute quickly, you may be too late to accomplish your task. It’s a delicate but crucial balance.

Your Own Standard of Success 

• Don’t measure yourself by what you’ve accomplished, but rather by what you should have accomplished with your abilities. This goes right back to my definition of success. Make the effort to do the best of which you are capable. Can anyone possibly do more than that?
• If UCLA had never won a national championship while I was coaching there, I would still have considered myself very successful because I was judging myself on other things, things I had some control over.
• The ten national titles provided no additional peace of mind nor a sense of validation of my efforts as a coach. That I already had. I had succeeded long before I was called a success.

Character Creates Longevity 

• I believe ability can get you to the top, but it takes character to keep you there. A big part of the character is the self-discipline needed to avoid complacency, resist temptation, and understand that past success doesn’t guarantee future success.

Always Be Progressing 

• You must never standstill. You’re either moving upward a little bit or you’re going the other way. You can’t expect to go upward too quickly, but you can sure go down very quickly. The slide down happens in a hurry. Progress comes slowly but steadily if you are patient and prepare diligently.
• The coach whose philosophy I have admired as much as any coach I’ve ever been associated with is Amos Alonzo Stagg. “Coach Stagg, it was a great year! A really great year.” Coach Stagg said, “I won’t know for another twenty years or so whether you’re correct.” He meant that it would take that long to see how the youngsters under his supervision turned out in life. That’s how I feel. I’m most proud of the athlete who does well with his life. That’s where success is. Basketball is just a very small part of it.

The Glory Is in Getting There 

• When people ask me now if I miss coaching UCLA basketball games, the national championships, the attention, the trophies, and everything that goes with them, I tell them this: I miss the practices. I don’t miss the games or the tournaments or all the other folderol. As Robert Louis Stevenson wrote, “It is better to travel hopefully than arrive.” I tried to do that. It’s the practice I miss most even now.

PART III COACHING, TEACHING, LEADING 

In great attempts, it is glorious even to fail. —WILFRED A. PETERSON

• I consider it a sacred trust: helping to mold character, instill productive principles and values, and provide a positive example to those under my supervision.
• A philosopher is also one who has a love of wisdom, studies the general principles of a field of knowledge or activity, and the processes governing thought, conduct, character, morals, and behavior. I believe these same traits are inherent in a leader. A real leader is much more than simply a person with authority.
• Leadership is the ability to get individuals to work together for the common good and the best possible results while at the same time letting them know they did it themselves.
• There is no area of basketball in which I am a genius. None. Tactically and strategically I’m just average, and this is not offering false modesty.
• We won national championships while I was coaching at UCLA because I was above average in analyzing players, getting them to fill roles as part of a team, paying attention to fundamentals and details, and working well with others, both those under my supervision and those whose supervision I was under. Additionally, I enjoyed very hard work.
• The most essential thing for a leader to have is the respect of those under his or her supervision. It starts with giving them respect.

A Leader Is Fair 

• Fairness is giving all people the treatment they earn and deserve. It doesn’t mean treating everyone alike. That’s unfair because everyone doesn’t earn the same treatment.

Pride as a Motivator 

• Pride is a better motivator than fear. I never wanted to teach through fear, punishment, or intimidation. Fear may work in the short term to get people to do something, but over the long run I believe personal pride is a much greater motivator. It produces far better results that last for a much longer time.

Leadership and Punishment 

• Leaders have to discipline. Those who dispense discipline must remember that its purpose is to help, to prevent, to correct, to improve, rather than to punish. You are not likely to get productive results if you antagonize. Punishment antagonizes. Furthermore, it is important to understand the purpose of criticism. Criticism is not meant to punish, but rather to correct something that is preventing better results. The only goal of criticism or discipline is improvement. You must keep that in mind and try to the best of your ability to use tact.

Psychological Warfare

• Never did I want to call the first time-out during a game. Never. It was almost a fetish with me because I stressed conditioning to such a degree. I wanted UCLA to come out and run our opponents so hard that they would be forced to call the first time-out just to catch their breath. I wanted them to have to stop the running before we did. At that first time-out, the opponent would know, and we would know they knew, who was in better condition. This has a psychological impact.

Knowledge alone is not enough to get desired results. You must have the more elusive ability to teach and to motivate. This defines a leader; if you can’t teach and you can’t motivate, you can’t lead.

• I believe that for every artificial peak you create, there is a valley. I don’t like valleys. Games are lost in valleys. Therefore, I wasn’t much for giving speeches to stir up emotions before a game. If you need emotionalism to make you perform better, then sooner or later you’ll be vulnerable, an emotional wreck, and unable to function to your level of ability.
• I would spend almost as much time planning practice as conducting it. Everything was listed on three-by-five cards down to the very last detail. Everything was planned out each day. In fact, in my later years at UCLA, I would spend two hours every morning with my assistants organizing that day’s practice session (even though the practice itself might be less than two hours long). I kept a record of every practice session in a looseleaf notebook for future reference.
• The pressure I created during practices may have exceeded that which opponents produced. I believe when an individual constantly works under pressure, he or she will respond automatically when faced with it during competition.

The Value in Feeling Valued 

• The individuals who aren’t playing much have a very important role in the development of those who are going to play more. They are needed, and you must let them know it. Everyone on the team, from the manager to the coach, from a secretary to an owner, has a role to fulfill. That role is valuable if the team is to come close to reaching its potential. The leader must understand this.

The Laws of Learning 

• The four laws of learning are explanation, demonstration, imitation, and repetition. The goal is to create a correct habit that can be produced instinctively under great pressure. To make sure this goal was achieved, I created eight laws of learning; namely, explanation, demonstration, imitation, repetition, repetition, repetition, repetition, and repetition.

A Coach’s Highest Compliment 

• One of the finest things a player could say about me after he left the team was that I cared every bit as much about him as an individual as I cared about him as an athlete.

A Key to Learning 

• People learn more effectively if the information is given in bite-size amounts rather than everything all at once.
• Instead of a great big heavy book of information, I gave the players individual handouts pertaining to various topics at what I considered to be appropriate times. When I broke the big subject of basketball down into small bits of information, players were much better able to learn what they needed to learn. They were not overwhelmed by the total body of knowledge.

PART IV PUTTING IT ALL TOGETHER: MY PYRAMID OF SUCCESS 

There is a choice you have to make, in everything you do. And you must always keep in mind the choice you make, makes you. —ANONYMOUS

• Success is peace of mind that is the direct result of self-satisfaction in knowing you did your best to become the best that you are capable of becoming. Furthermore, only one person can ultimately judge the level of your success—you.
• That real contest, of course, is striving to reach your personal best, and that is totally under your control. When you achieve that, you have achieved success. Period! You are a winner and only you fully know if you won.