Growing up in the suburbs of Chicago has offered some very exciting sports memories. I was fifteen when the Bears had that wild run to an NFL championship in 1985, I remember the “fridge” even scored a touchdown in the Super Bowl that year. I was in my young to mid twenties during the Michael Jordan Championship years. It was a great few years watching Michael and the Bulls win championship after championship. What many don’t realize is that it was not easy. Michael and his team mates got beat up year after year by Detroit before finally finding a way to get past them and win a string of championships. I think the most important thing I learned from the whole Michael Jordan era was exactly how he improved to the level he reached which ultimately raised the bar of basketball greatness and changed the game forever. What he did that was so different from others was that mentally, he didn’t compete against his competition. He only competed against himself. Had he focused on beating his competition as a measure of success, the best he would have done is be the best by a little. Because he only competed against himself, he was able to remove any ceiling of achievement and take the game of basketball to a whole new level. There was no bar to reach. By competing against himself, the bar was always moving higher.
Growing up, my sport was ice hockey. That and school was all I did for a long time. During my development years as a kid, I had the pleasure of watching another athlete change a game forever, Wayne Gretzky, “The Great One” as they call him. He and his Edmonton Oilers dominated the sport like nothing I have ever seen since. They won Stanley Cup after Stanley cup with ease. They would beat the good teams buy 2 to 3 goals and beat the weak teams by 5 to 10 goals sometimes. The first time I saw Gretzky play in person was against the Chicago Blackhawks who were not a strong team at the time. They scored about… Continue Reading
