1 - Stetson Bennett (Georgia Bulldogs) | One Word
2 - Kirby Smart | Hunting Season
3 - Dr. Michael Gervais | We Invest in Relationships
4 - Dr. Michael Gervais | Think Well With Optimism
5 - Marques Johnson |(NBA legend) Love Your Players
6 - The Cave of Adullam | React vs Respond
Stetson Bennett (Georgia Bulldogs) | ONE WORD
Stetson Bennett is the back-to-back national championship quarterback for the Georgia Bulldogs. He had to walk-on at Georgia, leave Georgia for a junior college, and come back to win a starting spot that nobody thought he could win.
Before winning his second national championship, former Heisman trophy-winning quarterback Tim Tebow asked Bennett if he has had the chance to sit back and think about his legacy and what he has accomplished. Bennett said, “No, not really. I’m proud of the way I’ve handled things, and I’m not proud of the way that I’ve handled things. Every day I just did what made sense to do that day, and then keep stacking days, and now we’re here.”
Tebow then asked, “If you were to pick one word that Georgia fans, teammates, or coaches would say about you, what would it be?”
Bennett said, “He was just tough, dude. I think I’m pretty damn tough, and that’s a good one for people to say about you. So, yeah, I’ll take tough”
When he was asked about his opportunity to repeat and if it added pressure, he said, “Last year, I was scared I was going to get benched half the time, and I think that helped me push through and work really hard. Now, I KNOW what we have to do.”
DISCUSSION QUESTIONS
1 - What is your biggest takeaway from the video?
2 - If you could pick one word for people to say about you, what would it be?
3 - Stetson Bennett had to play an entire season scared that he was going to get benched half the time during his first run for a National Championship. Have you ever been afraid to make mistakes?
4 - What advice would you give to someone who is afraid to make mistakes?
Kirby Smart | HUNTING SEASON
Here is a conversation Kirby Smart had after winning back-to-back College Football National Championships:
Reporter: You told this team to leave no doubt. How did they do that with this dominant performance today?
Kirby Smart: Really aggressive plan and not holding anything back. We wanted our kids to play without fear, and all year I told them, 'We ain't getting hunted. We do the hunting, and hunting season is almost over, and we hunted tonight.'
Reporter: Why was this team able to be the first team in the College Football Playoff Era to be back-to-back National Champions?
Kirby Smart: They had the will to work, they didn't listen to what everybody said about them, and everybody doubted them to start the year, and that chip on their shoulder was just big enough to create an edge for our team. Every time they got doubted, they came out fighting.
Reporter: How has Georgia become one of the benchmark programs in college football?
Kirby Smart: "Just hard work. We don't run from hard work; our kids don't run from work. As long as you don't have entitlement in your program, you have a shot."
DISCUSSION QUESTIONS
1 - What is your biggest takeaway from the video?
2 - What is the difference between being hunted and doing the hunting? Do you want to be hunted or do the hunting?
3 - Do you work hard and play better when people believe in you and praise you, or when people doubt you?
4 - What is 'The will to work?' and do you have it? 5 - Do you hunt hard work, or do you run from it?
Dr. Michael Gervais | RELATIONSHIP-BASED TEAMS
Tom Bilyeu runs a great podcast where he interviews very interesting people from many different walks of life. He interviewed Dr. Michael Gervais, a high-performance psychologist who works with high-performing athletes and teams, including the Seattle Seahawks in the NFL, and they discussed relationship-based teams.
Tom asked Gervais: How do you hold somebody to a standard, say you messed up, and at the same time, love them?
Gervais said, “The Seattle Seahawks are a relationship-based organization, and the product or output is football. None of us do this thing alone, and if we are going to do something amazingly difficult, we need to lock arms and stay in the trenches enough. Most people lock arms and as soon as it gets hard, we unlock our arms and take care of ourselves. But the extraordinary teams are able to lock arms and stay locked. They bet on themselves.”
We can do that by building strong relationships based on trust. Gervais said that we want to be around people who make us feel better, do better, and be better. We want to feel that the people around us have our backs, understand us, and make decisions that benefit both of us.
DISCUSSION QUESTIONS
1 - What is your biggest takeaway from this video?
2 - Have you ever been on a team that locked arms and got stronger when the going got tough?
3 - Have you ever been on a team that unlocked arms when the going got tough?
4 - What do you think is the biggest difference between teams who stay locked together during difficult times vs teams who don’t?
Dr. Michael Gervais | THINK WELL WITH OPTIMISM
Dr. Michael Gervais is a high-performance psychologist who works with some of the best athletes and teams in the world, training the mindset skills and practices essential to pursuing and revealing one’s potential. His clients include world record holders, Olympians, internationally acclaimed artists and musicians, MVPs from every major sport, and Fortune 100 CEOs.
Gervais says, “Optimism, the fundamental belief that things will work out, is at the center of mental toughness. If you want to do amazing things with your life, there are hard times coming. Right when you reach those hard moments, what are the conditions of your mind? Have you conditioned and trained your mind to believe that amazing is about to take place? That something good is about to take place?”
He said, “Thinking well is finding an optimistic way to think about the future. When you look at the best performers, they fundamentally believe that it's going to work out and they will be successful.
When it gets hard and it's not going according to plan, they have this internal mechanism, a way that they speak to themselves that says, “Stay in it, I’m going to figure it out, we are going to figure it out, stay in it just a little bit longer, it's going to turn, and it's going to be amazing."
That is the psychological principle of optimism. It's a trainable skill that becomes part of your DNA when you look for the good.
Thinking well is grounded in optimism and in a belief that things are going to work out, and that very nature changes the way we deal with stress”
DISCUSSION QUESTIONS
1 - What is your biggest takeaway from this video?
2 - Do you consider yourself an optimistic person?
3 - When things get hard, what does the voice in your head say? If it’s positive, how do you stay positive? If it's negative, how do you turn it positive?
4 - Do you know how to talk to yourself instead of listening to yourself? If you could give yourself advice on how to handle adversity, what would you say?
Marques Johnson | LOVE YOUR PLAYERS
Marques Johnson is a former NBA All-Star who now works as an analyst with the Milwaukee Bucks. In this video, he talks about Buck head coach Mike Budenholzer and his style of holistic Coaching where they focus on building relationships with their athletes.
Marques said that each coach on their staff is responsible for 3-4 players, and they meet daily for about 20 minutes to talk about life. They make a connection with the players to show them they care.
He said he once asked coach John Wooden, “What is the most important thing or aspect about coaching, what would that be?” Coach Wooden said, “You have to love your players. You don't have to like them all, but you have to love them.”
When you connect with a coach on that level, you are going to go out there and play for them.
THOUGHTS
1 - What is your biggest takeaway from the video?
2 - Do you agree with what Coach Wooden said about loving your players? Why or why not?
3 - What is the best way to get athletes to go out and run through a wall for you?
The Cave of Adullam | REACT vs RESPOND
Martial arts sensei Jason Wilson runs The Cave of Adullam, a transformational training academy based in Detroit, Michigan for boys who are emotionally distressed, mentally discontented, and spiritually in debt. His mantra is: “It’s easier to raise boys than repair broken men,” and Wilson’s methodology teaches emotional stability instead of discipline, setting these children on a path to become whole and healthy adults.
In the video below, Wilson is talking to young men about how to manage their emotions when being disrespected. Wilson says:
“We react to disrespect, but we don’t respond to disrespect. I allow myself a moment to process what’s going on so that we can discover the best response to the threat; we have to pick the one that will succeed and be advantageous for them. When we try to resolve conflict with conflict, there will continue to be conflict. A man without self-control is like a city without walls; basically, anyone can penetrate him, his mind, and his emotions.
Don’t let your ego, pride, or past trauma negatively affect you. Don’t be fixed on a response instead of allowing yourself to process the best decision to be made in that situation.”
DISCUSSION QUESTIONS
1 - What is your biggest takeaway from the video?
2 - How would you have responded in that situation?
3 - Do you experience disrespect in sports?
4 - How do you respond to disrespect?
Comments