Motivation
5 Motivational Lessons Michael Jordan Taught Us
Michael Jordan is arguably the best player in the history of the NBA. 6 Championship rings, 6 Final MVP’s and 5 NBA MVP’s are just a few amazing achievements to his name. A number of great NBA players have credited Michael Jordan as their inspiring mentor that they looked up to during their career in basketball.
So what makes Michael Jordan such an amazing individual? What lessons of Motivation can we all learn from Michael Jordan?
The good fella’s at Athletic Poetics have the answer.
Here are the 5 Motivational Lesson’s from Michael Jordan.
MJ’s 5 Lesson’s of Motivation
Make decisions. Take action.
Get in the game. Get involved. Don’t be afraid to make decisions because they may lead to mistakes. Mistakes are inevitably part of the journey. If you were perfect you wouldn’t be on this journey. Some people fear failure so much that they freeze up and are afraid to make decisions or take take action. Conquer your fears by making decisions and taking action.
“A man who suffers before it is necessary, suffers more than is necessary” — Seneca
Find a solution.
When you hit a roadblock, don’t waste your energy and time panicking. Take a moment to gather yourself and find a solution, it exists.
As Winston Churchill said:
“The pessimist sees difficulty in every opportunity. The optimist sees the opportunity in every difficulty.”
Teamwork FTW.
What if Michael Jordan didn’t have Scottie Pippen? Jordan is arguably the greatest player of all time but he did not win six championships by himself. Jordan was blessed with a teammate and Hall of Fame player Scottie Pippen (one of the 50 Greatest Players in NBA History).
Lets not forget that Dennis Rodman (7x NBA Rebounding Champion) and Toni Kukoc (1996, NBA Sixth Man of the Year) were integral players in the second three-peat. Jordan was also coached by Phil Jackson, possibly greatest coach in NBA history.
The moral of this story is, teamwork For The Win.
Practice, Practice, Practice.
Practice your fundamentals to perfect your technique. The best players in the game constantly train with coaches to better their fundamental footwork, defense, and shooting mechanics. Don’t get lost in the details so much that you lose sight of the basics.
Be tenacious and improve.
If you’re not failing you’re not trying. Embrace your setbacks and failures as fuel and motivation. Accept that failure is part of success. Find perseverance and continue, you have it within you.
Last Friday was a bad day for me. I woke up late, missed the gym and didn’t meditate.
None of this was intentional.
I then turned my computer on to do what I do every day: blog. I was not prepared for the whirlwind that followed.
As I opened up my social media channels, there were a lot more than usual, direct messages. I started reading each one and they were from colleagues and friends who wanted to warn me that I had a large amount of hate-fuelled comments on social media. I’m usually pretty good at dealing with hate comments. Not on that day, though — I was having a ‘bad day.’
I turned off the computer and didn’t respond to anybody. In the same week, I’d been told I was now a LinkedIn Top Voice for 2018.
I should have been celebrating and I didn’t because I didn’t feel worthy. If anything, I wanted to give up there and then. Luckily I didn’t follow through with any of these ideas. I knew it was just noise in my awful day.
I went away to sit on the couch and think about what I’d just read. Without really thinking about what I was going to do for the rest of the day, I began thinking about my team at work. There were several leadership challenges that I had to solve.
One was from a customer that was being abusive to female staff. Another was a rejection I had to deliver to someone that wanted to work with us. The hardest part about delivering the rejection was that I’d already said yes.
Despite the day being bad, I made a fundamental decision — to keep doing what I do and not stop. I said to myself “How can I inspire people while simultaneously solving both these challenges?”
I’m a big believer that it’s not what you say that matters; it’s what you do. Talk is cheap. I came up with a bold plan to address both challenges.
I was going to do something that made me see the good in the people involved.
Even if the people in both situations had let me down, I was going to assume they were still good.
I concocted a plan to help both people and try and show them a more positive way to move forward. If I break down the plan, it was about being an inspiration in both situations.
I didn’t feel like being inspiring.
It was not the day to be inspiring.
But it was the only way I could motivate myself to finish off this bad day and wake up the next morning fresh. It’s funny how a good nights sleep takes away all the pain and negativity from the day before.
So, by the end of the day, I enabled both plans. I set out to release inspiration in both scenarios and that was my only focus. I didn’t look at anymore hate fuelled comments or go near social media.
On that bad day last Friday, my actions helped me keep moving forward and not give up.
It’s not about necessarily seeing the good in your bad day.
I’ve read this sort of advice heaps, but it requires a lot of willpower.
“Using your actions to make the day better rather than trying to think your way out of your bad day seems to be a lot easier to implement”
It’s not about the bad day.
Bad days will happen.
It’s what you do on a bad day that determines if you’ll feel the full effect of all the negativity that can potentially knock you out like a Tsunami that comes your way when all you wanted to do was lay on the beach and soak up some sun.
I’ve learned to find situations during a day that’s not working out well for me, to do something good, and often that’s not something that benefits me. If I was to look at it another way it would be “How do I not focus on my own bad day?”
Trying to make someone else’s day good distracts you from your own bad day.
If you want to increase your productivity and learn some more valuable life hacks, then join my private mailing list on timdenning.net
The dialogue in your mind is the battleground where your motivation lives and dies every day. In every moment, your words are either lifting you or sabotaging your success. Unfortunately, most people are losing this battle within themselves. They are using their most powerful asset — their mental energy — to beat themselves up, play victimization games, or stop themselves from sharing their passion. (more…)
If your company did well in 2018, you must be sitting there challenged with a thought inside your head – How can I continue the streak and keep up my marketing game this year? You have knocked yourself enough to meet your 2018 goals, and all you need now is a boost of morale to face all that 2019 has in store for you. (more…)
Someone asked on the internet how they can make their country better.
They considered themselves ordinary and felt that they had to be someone special to make a difference in their country, India.
Their question made me feel a bit emotional because I can relate. I too have also dreamt of making my country better.
The most common answer to this question is to get involved in politics.
Many of you reading this find politics really boring including me. I’ve learned through my own experience that politics is not the only way you can make your country better.
Here’s how you can make your country better:
Use your voice
When I was faced with the question “How do I make my country better?” I decided to use my voice.
It was this decision that changed everything. I spent every day using my voice to stand for something. I wanted to inspire the world through entrepreneurship and personal development.
So, I started using my voice by posting on LinkedIn. I used my voice and transcribed it into words to tell the citizens of my country what I think they needed to hear.
Using your voice is incredibly scary at first. As soon as you start sharing your thoughts, many people will say nothing. You’ll get almost no feedback. As your voice starts to get louder over time (probably years) the opposite will happen and you’ll attract trolls and critics.
The hardest part about using your voice is having the courage every day to use it and not being obsessed with the outcome.
By using my voice online through blogging and LinkedIn, I managed to get a 35,000 person bank to start talking about my ideas with staff and customers, and I was voted LinkedIn Australia’s Top Voice that year.
Using the power of your voice is the number one way you can change your country.
It’s in your experiences, ideas and thoughts that you can find what it is that can help your country.
In my country, Australia, we are quite well off, but we still lack a positive mindset. Some of us work jobs we hate and we like things that only money can buy. There’s a competition to get the biggest house or the most expensive car.
It’s not a problem everyone in Australia suffers from, but it’s widespread. I believe by using my own voice to inspire people to seek alternatives, I can change my country.
The results thus far suggest I’m well on the way to changing my country.
Be kind
Changing your country seems like a huge task. It sounds like something only a Nelson Mandela sort of fella can achieve. That’s not true.
A simple understanding of the power of kindness can change your country.
There was this guy I read about online that changed his country by giving out free hugs because he couldn’t run in the local marathon. He embraced his kind nature and ended up impacting millions of people in his country.
Being kind is infectious because we’re wired to do it. When we see one person be kind, we want to do the same.
The problem in my country (and many others) is that we’ve sacrificed kindness for greed.
We’ve let our country’s economy become the most important factor instead of measuring the way we treat people and the ability of a country’s nation to overcome adversity together.
Kindness is so important because every one of our countries will face adversity, and kindness is the solution to that inevitable problem.
Pick up the trash
This one seems even smaller in impact. It’s not.
I found that by picking up the rubbish I saw in places like my apartment lobby, I was able to show myself that I care about my country.
When we care about our country, we choose to make it look beautiful so others can enjoy it. Something simple like picking up the trash can take you a long way towards helping your country.
Every country has an environmental problem and picking up rubbish can help solve it. If we all picked up one piece of trash, then each of our country’s would be a hell of a lot cleaner.
Don’t think you can’t make your country better
A lot of what I’ve learned, by trying to make my own country better, has come from the belief that I can have an impact.
There are so many people who want to do nothing more than complain which wastes time and energy and doesn’t make anyone’s country better.
The way you make your country better is by believing you can and taking one or two small actions to start the process.
The people that change their country believe they can.
If you want to increase your productivity and learn some more valuable life hacks, then join my private mailing list on timdenning.net
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taytay
Dec 9, 2016 at 8:05 pm
i like this
Tyler Basu
Nov 24, 2013 at 7:51 pm
Great post. Michael Jordan truly is one of the world’s greatest achievers and the principles in this article are applicable to individuals striving to succeed in any vocation.
ziad abdelnour
Nov 21, 2013 at 8:36 am
“Success is not found in what you have achieved but rather in who you have become”
thank you,
stefan tochev
Nov 22, 2013 at 2:48 pm
Amazing quote Ziad, thanks for sharing it!