Make it your super bowl
The Super Bowl is the pinnacle of professional football, something that NFL players and coaches compete to play in each year, but most likely dream about winning during the entirety of their football career. There is no doubt that each player who has the privilege of playing in this game gives maximum effort because the outcome has such great importance.
Professionally, I have had the pleasure of working with a select number of individuals who believe that what they do is the most important job in the world. Their job titles and responsibilities vary greatly; however, their commitment to excellence remains the same. Due to the passion these individuals have for their role in the organization, I commonly say that to them, whatever it is they do is their “Super Bowl.”
You don’t need to be a CEO or the head coach to demonstrate this principle. For example, a high school basketball coach from Ohio took the bottom five players on his roster and gave them the name “The Mad Dogs.” He then told his team that the Mad Dogs would play the last minute of each first quarter and the first minute of each second quarter in every game, no matter what the score was or what was at stake. To the Mad Dogs, these two minutes were their “Super Bowl.” Despite being outmatched from a talent standpoint, the coach shared that over time, his team was able to gain a competitive advantage because The Mad Dogs played so hard.
Regardless of your profession or status, make today or whatever it is you are doing your “Super Bowl.” As Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. put it, “If a man is called to be a street sweeper, he should sweep streets even as Michaelangelo painted, or Beethoven composed music, or Shakespeare wrote poetry. He should sweep streets so well that all the hosts of heaven and earth will pause to say, ‘Here lived a great street sweeper who did his job well.’”
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!
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