John Robert Wooden was an American basketball player and coach. Nicknamed the “Wizard of Westwood,” he won ten NCAA national championships in a 12-year period – seven in a row – as head coach at UCLA, an unprecedented feat. Within this period, his teams won a then-record of 88 consecutive games. He was named national coach of the year six times.
He was one of the most revered coaches wand was beloved by his former players, among them Kareem Abdul Jabbar and Bill Walton. Wooden was renowned for his short, simple inspirational messages to his players, including his “Pyramid of Success.” These often were directed at how to be a success in life as well as in basketball.
· “I’ve always tried to make clear that basketball is not the ultimate. It is of small importance in comparison to the total life we live. There is only one kind of life that truly wins, and that is the one that places faith in the hands of the Savior. Until that is done, we are on an aimless course that runs in circles and goes nowhere.”
· “It is most difficult, in my mind, to separate any success, whether it be in your profession, your family, or as in my case, in basketball, from my religion.”
· “You cannot attain and maintain physical condition unless you are morally and mentally conditioned. And it is impossible to be in moral condition unless you are spiritually conditioned. I always told my playwear that our team condition depended on two factors: how hard they worked on the floor during practiced and how well they behaved between practices.”
· “You can’t live a perfect day without doing something for someone who will never be able to repay you.”
· “There are many things that are essential to arriving at true peace of mind, and one of the most important is faith, which cannot be acquired without prayer.”
· “Consider the rights of others before your own feelings, and the feelings of others before your own rights.”
· “Material possessions, winning scores, and great reputations are meaningless in the eyes of the Lord, because He knows what we really are and that is all that matters.”
· “Be prepared and be honest.”
· “Be more concerned with your character than your reputation, because your character is what you really are, while your reputation is merely what others think you are.”
· “What you are as a person is far more important than what you are as a basketball player.”
· “Don’t measure yourself by what you have accomplished, but what you should have accomplished with your ability.”
· “Young people need models, not critics.”
· “It is what we learn after we know it all that really counts.”
· “The most important key to achieving great success is to decide upon your goal and launch, get started, take action, move.”
· “It’s the little details that are vital. Little things make big things happen.”
· “Don’t let what you cannot do interfere with what you can do.”
· “If you’re not making mistakes, then you’re not doing anything. I’m positive that a doer makes mistakes.”
· “Never mistake activity for achievement.”
· “For an athlete to function properly, he must be intent. There has to be a definite purpose and goal if you are to progress. If you are not intent about what you are doing, you aren’t able to resist the temptation to do something else that might be more fun at the moment.”
· “Although I wanted my players to work to win, I tried to convince them that they had always won when they had done their best.”
· “It’s not so important who starts the game but who finishes it.”
· “You can’t let praise or criticism get to you. It’s a weakness to get caught up in either one.”
· “Success comes from knowing that you did your best to become the best that you are capable of becoming.”
· “If you don’t have time to do it right, when will you have time to do it over?”
· “Things turn out best for people who make the best out of the way things turn out.”
· “It isn’t what you do, but how you do it.”
· “Success is peace of mind which is a direct result of self-satisfaction in knowing you did your best to become the best you are capable of becoming.”
· “Adversity is the state in which man most easily becomes acquainted with himself, being especially free of admirers then.”
· “Ability is a poor man’s wealth.”
· “The worst thing about new books is that they keep us from reading the old ones."
· “Ability may get you to the top, but it takes character to keep you there.”
· “Sports do not build character. They reveal it.”
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