Hard to love
I owe a great deal of gratitude to Justin Su’a, mental performance coach for the Tampa Bay Rays. He is the one who directed me down the path of pursuing a doctorate in sport and performance psychology. He also encouraged me to start writing. He shared with me that early on in his professional career he wrote a daily blog. “Most days only one or two people would read what I wrote, and most of the time they were related to me,” Su’a laughed as he shared with me the process of developing his first book. “But that’s not what’s important. What’s important is that you start producing content and that you don’t skip a day.”
I followed Su’a’s advice and began creating blog posts on medium.com. I even took the advice of many authors on the podcast circuit and shared with others that my first book would be published by July 6, 2022, although I was unsure of what that book would look like. When I eventually decided to use a daily theme/devotional type of format, I began reading my old blog posts and began to categorize them. I discovered I had written: 17 posts about discipline, 21 regarding my Christian faith, 25 involving the theme of effort, 34 encouraging others to have a positive attitude, 51 concerning principles/theories of leadership, and thanks to my kind professors at The University of Western States, enough posts related to sport and performance psychology to fill a years worth of entries. The theme of love, however, only had 8 entries. What I claim to be the most important part of my coaching philosophy, I had written the least about.
Whatever it is you claim to be most important, stay focused on that, or you may quickly lose sight of your main objective. For example, many people claim family to be most important but consistently put work first. Others say that their faith is the most critical component of their lives but constantly make choices that say otherwise. How about you? What do you believe is the most important part of your life, and do your actions tell the same story? Would others agree with you, or do they hear/see you speak most about your occupation, politics, or favorite sports team? As Steven Covey wrote, “the main thing is to keep the main thing the main thing.”
Coach Nelson holds a doctorate in sport and performance psychology and currently serves as a high school football coach, trainer for the positive coaching alliance (PCA) and adjunct faculty member at Grand Canyon University. He has worked for multiple professional sport franchises, a Fortune 100 Company, a division 1 athletic departments and has won numerous awards for his LEADership abilities.
His mission is to positively influence the world through Love, Effort, Attitude and Discipline (#LEAD). To learn more about the LEAD philosophy follow him on Twitter Levi Nelson or reach out via email at rln10@zips.uakron.edu He’d love to learn about or help you in your journey!
