We Are All Originals
“Be yourself; everyone else is already taken.”
- Oscar Wilde
Bill Belichick has been to nine Super Bowls as the head football coach of the New England Patriots. He has won six of those opportunities. He also has two Super Bowl Rings as a Defensive Coordinator under Bill Parcells while with the New York Giants.
He’s really good at what he does. Most likely the Patriots will be his last job as a football coach. Other teams know this. They don’t try to hire him, but they do try to hire his assistants. Seventeen times, teams have taken a member of his coaching staff to be their head coach, to bring the Patriot Way to their teams.
Question: How many of these former Patriot assistant won a Super Bowl as a head football coach? If your answer is more than ZERO you are wrong. Not one of the branches off the Belichick coaching tree have won a Super Bowl as a head coach.
Why? Because they all try to bring “Bill Belichick” to their team. Some try to act like him. Some try to “think” like him in putting together their teams. Some mimic the play calling. But none of this works: “Why?”
They are NOT Bill Belichick. They have no idea how he would respond to a specific situation. They know how he reacted to a “SIMILAR” situation, but life is not math – there is more than one correct answer. Belichick is the only person who knows how Bill Belichick would respond.
These former assistants are just trying to copy the most successful coach in the history of the NFL. They can’t be him. And yet team after team keeps trying to bring these Belichick-Wanna-Be’s to their teams. And two or three years later they get rid of these guys.
The lesson here is that we should never try to copy. We can integrate some of their ideas and tactics and learn from our mentors but we should never try to copy them.
Poor Imitation
I remember an early meeting at a college I was at. One of the young GA’s was on a roll. Heck, he was 24 – he had been “around” – and he was telling the staff of successful coaches how it needed to be done. The head coach was leaning back in his chair and when the young whelp took a breath the head coach said, “Hey, there is already one Jon Gruden, try being yourself for once.” The kid quickly tucked his tail … and pouted the rest of the meeting.
The head coach was right. This kid was even using Gruden’s voice and mannerisms. Now this kid grew up. And has had several “big” jobs. But has never attained the success that his mentors had – because he didn’t take the head coaches advice.
He didn’t act like himself. Mostly because this guy doesn’t know how to be himself. He has never truly looked at his gifts and talents. He was and still is a hell of a recruiter. But then when he gets these recruits to campus, he morphs into some other coach, right before their eyes. This change of personality shocks the recruits and they stop trusting the “shapeshifter”.
Quiver Full of Arrows
You are gifted with your own unique strengths, abilities and skills. In my book Move or Die, I speak about each of us has our own Crayons. When we stay in our coloring box, we can have great success. When we venture outside our Crayon boxes, we get in to trouble. We get into foreign territory. We’re not sure where we need to go. We aren’t sure when we need to push or when we need to backtrack.
Unfortunately, we usually make the mistake of attacking first and then assessing the damage second. If we were being ourselves – we would know the answer – before we heard the question – to coin a phrase that I use quite often.
When we are acting out of our uniqueness we know how to respond to each circumstance as it comes to us. We have been doing it all of our lives. We know who we are. We know our Crayons and the power of each that we have.
Story Time
Here is a story from my past when I tried to “copy” others and not be myself.
When I was young, I watched college and profession sports on TV. I heard stories of the great Vince Lombardi, I was a little too young to see him at his peak, but I have read most of the books about him. I was able to watch Bo Schembechler and Woody Hayes. Bobby Knight was a championship coach during my sponge period.
I soaked up as much information as I could about these men. Here’s what I figured out. They had two things in common. First, they were all championship coaches. Second, they all YELLED. I put 1 + 1 together and figured if I want to win championships, I will need to become a yeller. I didn’t have this Crayon in my box (being a yeller) … but I figured I could “fake it till I make it”.
After 11 years of coaching my coaching record was: 33 wins – 77 losses and 1 tie. I didn’t see that I was the problem. I figured that the other coaches needed to step up and turn up their volume and yell more. Maybe then we could win.
This all came to an end when I leaned into a chicken house fan whose stainless-steel blade, spinning at several hundred rotations per minute, made a six-inch valley through the middle of my head – to paraphrase Bruce Springsteen (Song: Fire: …edgy and dull, cut a six-inch valley through the middle of my skull …). I had to receive a clean bill of health before the season so I went back to my Neuro-Surgeon. When the doctor listed all of the things that would cause “intercranial pressure” that would kill me, my major tool (since I didn’t have the yelling crayon in my box – I had to add outside tools) had been removed.
So instead, as I stood in front of the team before its first practice, I spoke, at little more than a whisper. And for the first time in my career the athletes didn’t rear back in “respect”, but leaned forward to listen. They WANTED to learn and to be coached. At that moment I had my most important epiphany: Stop being a bully and start being a teacher. From that point on, I went on to win nearly 285 games throughout the rest of my career.
You see, being a ‘teacher’ was in my Crayon box. Being a bully was not.
Be Original
We are all originals. We begin to have issues when we get away from who we are supposed to be.
Don’t get me wrong … we get to decide where we end up … as long as we work out of our Crayon box.
Myself, I only have eight crayons in my box. And I went to the top of my profession using MY Crayons. I also wrote a best-selling book by reaching out to people who had book editing and publishing in their Crayon box.
To be successful we need to understand, truly, what our Crayons are. That’s the first hurdle.
The second hurdle is what trips most people up.
It’s the difference between me and someone with 120 crayons with the built-in crayon sharpener in the back. If you look at my Crayons (unique combination of skills – talents – abilities) you will see nothing but nubs and shrapnel; of once strong Crayons. The paper is gone, the box had disintegrated long ago, and has been replaced by a sandwich bag, not a Ziplock, but a fold-over plastic sandwich bag.
The 120 Crayons, which are nicely stored in the box they came in, with the Crayon sharpener in the back, still have their factory flat tops on them. And that is the reason why I can start at the very bottom of the coaching mountain and make it to the top.
I use every one of my Crayons, every single day and live my optimal life. And those with more talent, who choose only to use a few of their crayons. They slowly trod through life – always hoping things will magically get better.
This will offend some people. That’s okay. But you should be humbled not pissed off. How did I get to the top and you know you are better than I am? You use ALL of your talents … don’t you? If not – why not?
Keynote Story
I once asked the audience where I was giving a keynote speech: If I put 500 Crayons, all different, in front of them and asked them to name a Crayon after one of their gifts, talents, skills, and put them it in a box. Then repeat with the next crayon, giving it a name for another one of your talents. Until there box contained a crayon for each of their skills, talents and abilities.
I then asked, “How many crayons do they have in their box?” I had people telling me, “500” – “400” – “418”. I then asked if they used EACH and EVERY ONE of their talents EVERY DAY? Most all dropped their heads.
Know Your WHAT
We are all originals. If we understand WHAT makes us original and use all those Crayons every single day, we will live our optimal life. Until that time we will continue to struggle to move forward.
What happens is that after we struggle and struggle, we eventually get tired of a lack of progress and we begin to slow down, we begin to make excuses and then we begin to blame others. When the truth of the matter is that we are the to blame.
Understand you are the answer to all of these problems. Miyamoto Musashi, the great Samurai, tells us as much in his seminal book “The Five Rings”, “There is nothing outside of yourself that can ever enable you to get better, stronger, richer, quicker or smarter. Everything is within. Everything exists. Seek nothing outside of yourself.”
We have everything we need to be as successful as we want to be. If you don’t use all of your talents (Crayons) then that is your choice. But, be prepared to continue to be frustrated as you work to accomplish other people’s dreams while your years fade away. TRUST in YOU!
Have a great day!
