Jesus Christ our Mediator
Seek Him ........> Hear Him .......> Know Him .......> Be like Him
Thursday, March 25, 2010
Joe Reed: HPHS Coach and Athletic Director
Click the > play button below and listen to the wisdom of Coach Joe Reed, Boys' Varsity Basketball Coach and School-wide Athletic Director. Coach Reed shares excellent insights for being a successful student-athlete, principles that one can use for a lifetime to enjoy happy and successful living.
Wednesday, March 24, 2010
How to Be Brilliant
Monday, March 22, 2010
How to Be Brilliant
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/03/21/books/review/Paul-t.html
By ANNIE MURPHY PAUL
Published: March 18, 2010
You’ve probably heard it at one time or another: Most of us use only 10 percent of our brains. More factoid than fact, a claim of unknown provenance and dubious accuracy, the idea sticks around because of the enduring appeal of its underlying premise. We’d all love to think that we’re in possession of tremendous untapped potential, of latent mental powers just waiting to be activated. It seems so convenient, like falling in love with the person you’re already married to, or whipping up dinner from what’s already in your kitchen. You don’t have to leave home, or even change out of your pajamas.
THE GENIUS IN ALL OF US
Why Everything You’ve Been Told About Genetics, Talent, and IQ Is Wrong
By David Shenk
Motivational gurus from Dale Carnegie to Tony Robbins have long promised access to these hidden stores of genius. Now here comes David Shenk with “The Genius in All of Us,” which argues that we have before us not a “talent scarcity” but a “latent talent abundance.” Our problem “isn’t our inadequate genetic assets,” but “our inability, so far, to tap into what we already have.” The truth is “that few of us know our true limits, that the vast majority of us have not even come close to tapping what scientists call our ‘unactualized potential.’ ” At first it would seem that Shenk, the author of thoughtful books on information overload, memory loss and chess, has veered into guru territory. But he has assembled a large body of research to back up his claims.
Two bodies, in fact. The first concerns the emerging science of epigenetics, the study of how the environment modifies the way genes are expressed. Since the days of Crick and Watson, we’ve tended to see genes as a set of straightforward instructions, a blueprint for constructing a person. Over the last 20 years, however, some scientists have begun to complicate that picture. “It turns out that the genetic instructions themselves are influenced by other inputs,” Shenk writes. “Genes are constantly activated and deactivated by environmental stimuli, nutrition, hormones, nerve impulses and other genes.” That means there can be no guaranteed genetic windfalls, or fixed genetic limits, bestowed at the moment of conception. Instead there is a continually unfolding interaction between our heredity and our world, a process that may be in some measure under our control.
The second body of research investigates the nature of exceptional ability and how it arises. We’ve traditionally regarded superior talent as a rare and mysterious gift bequeathed to a lucky few. In fact, Shenk writes, science is revealing it to be the product of highly concentrated effort. He describes the work of the psychologist Anders Ericsson, who wondered if he could train an ordinary person to perform extraordinary feats of memory. When Ericsson began working with a young man identified as S.F., his subject could, like most of us, hold only seven numbers in his short-term memory. By the end of the study, S.F. could correctly recall an astonishing 80-plus digits. With the right kind of mental discipline, Ericsson and his co-investigator concluded, “there is seemingly no limit to memory performance.” Shenk weaves accounts of such laboratory experiments, conducted on average people, with the tales of singularly accomplished individuals — Ted Williams and Michael Jordan, Mozart and Beethoven — who all worked relentlessly to hone their skills.
Bring these two domains together, and a new vision of achievement begins to come into focus. Shenk’s “ambitious goal,” he tells us, is to take this widely dispersed research and “distill it all into a new lingua franca, adopting helpful new phrases and metaphors” to replace old and misleading ones. Forget about genes as unchanging “blueprints” and talent as a “gift,” all tied up in a bow. “We cannot allow ourselves to think that way anymore,” he declares with some fervor. Instead, Shenk proposes, imagine the genome as a giant control board, with thousands of switches and knobs that turn genes off and on or tune them up and down. And think of talent not as a thing, but as a process; not as something we have, but as something we do.
It’s ambitious indeed to try to overthrow in one go the conventional ideas and images that have accumulated since 1874, when Francis Galton first set the words “nature” and “nurture” against each other. Yet Shenk convinces the reader that such a coup is necessary, and he gets it well under way. He tells engaging stories, lucidly explains complex research and offers fresh insights into the nature of exceptional performance: noting, for example, that profound achievements are often driven by petty jealousies and resentments, or pointing out the surprising fact that great talent seems to cluster geographically and temporally, undermining the assumption that it’s all due to individual genetic endowments. Just how tall a task Shenk took on is evident in his voluminous endnotes, which go on as long as the main text and are just as interesting. Here the author allows us to watch him working his way through the literature, inquiring, arguing, marveling, as he wrestles a new understanding into being.
Shenk doesn’t neglect the take-home point we’re all waiting for, even titling a chapter “How to Be a Genius (or Merely Great).” The answer has less in common with the bromides of motivational speakers than with the old saw about how to get to Carnegie Hall: practice, practice, practice. Whatever you wish to do well, Shenk writes, you must do over and over again, in a manner involving, as Ericsson put it, “repeated attempts to reach beyond one’s current level,” which results in “frequent failures.” This is known as “deliberate practice,” and over time it can actually produce changes in the brain, making new heights of achievement possible. Behold our long rumored potential, unleashed at last! Shenk is vague about how, exactly, this happens, but to his credit he doesn’t make it sound easy.
“You have to want it, want it so bad you will never give up, so bad that you are ready to sacrifice time, money, sleep, friendships, even your reputation,” he writes. “You will have to adopt a particular lifestyle of ambition, not just for a few weeks or months but for years and years and years. You have to want it so bad that you are not only ready to fail, but you actually want to experience failure: revel in it, learn from it.”
It’s in this self-help section that two weaknesses in Shenk’s argument become evident. The first is the matter of where the extreme drive and discipline that greatness requires are supposed to come from. Shenk tells us about
Beethoven writing 60 to 70 drafts of a single phrase of music, and Ted Williams hitting practice pitches until his hands bled.
Shenk would be the last to argue that such fierce dedication is “inborn” or “innate” — but if it isn’t, are the rest of us all equally capable of mustering it? We certainly can’t retroactively grant ourselves the kind of intense childhood exposure that Shenk describes for many of his greats, like Mozart and Yo-Yo Ma.
Shenk is also evasive about just what restrictions individual biology places on achievement. He is careful to say that we are not born without limits — it’s just that none of us can know what those limits are “before we’ve applied enormous resources and invested vast amounts of time.” He ducks the implication that these limits will, eventually, reveal themselves, and that they will stop most of us well short of Mozart territory. There’s a tension here between Shenk’s extravagant talk of “greatness” and “genius” and the more modest message he delivers: practice can improve your performance, perhaps far more than you imagined.
Still, it doesn’t feel as if Shenk is making false promises, perhaps because he so sincerely follows his own advice.
In an oddly touching footnote, he relates his own struggle to achieve. “My attitude toward my own writing is simple: I assume that everything I write is rubbish until I have demonstrated otherwise. I will routinely write and rewrite a sentence, paragraph and/or chapter 20, 30, 40 times — as many times as it takes to feel satisfied.”
Such efforts have resulted in a deeply interesting and important book. David Shenk may not be a genius yet, but give him time.
Monday, March 22, 2010
Dr. "J" Julius Erving
“I think I started learning lessons about being a good person long before I ever knew what basketball was. And that starts in the home, it starts with the parental influence. I came from a broken home, so my mom was a major influence in my life. And I remember hearing her say hundreds, thousands of times, ‘You don't have to work that hard to try to be a good person, just do it.’ “
“I think she would add to that, even if there are a lot of things in life that you can't do, this is something that you can. This is a do-able thing. All it requires is programming your attitude properly and relating to people, as you would want to have them relate to you.”
Preparation
Preparation is the key to scoring high on a test, for performing beautifully in an athletic contest, for performing well on stage, for giving that public speech. Once the test begins, your preparation time ends. Once the game starts, preparation for that game ends. Once you start performing on stage, preparation for that performance ends. Once you begin to deliver your public speech, preparation for that speech ends. Students, excellent preparation precedes excellent grades and performance. Look what three of the top college athletic coaches have to say regarding preparation for a game:
Anson Dorrance: “I think preparation is the absolute. All things you do before the game begins are certainly more important than whatever happens during the soccer game.”
Bob Knight: “I think preparation. I think in-game adjustments are the most overrated thing in coaching. The team that’s willing to prepare to win is going to be the team that wins. Most everybody plays to win, but it’s preparing to win that I think is the most important thing in successful play.”
Mike Krzyzewski: "Pre-game preparation is much more important as far as the coach and player relationship. I find most players, if they start a game and don’t have the proper mind-set, it’s very difficult to turn that around."
What’s more important, pregame preparation or in-game adjustments?
Anson Dorrance: “I think preparation is the absolute. All things you do before the game begins are certainly more important than whatever happens during the soccer game.”
Bob Knight: “I think preparation. I think in-game adjustments are the most overrated thing in coaching. The team that’s willing to prepare to win is going to be the team that wins. Most everybody plays to win, but it’s preparing to win that I think is the most important thing in successful play.”
Mike Krzyzewski: "Pre-game preparation is much more important as far as the coach and player relationship. I find most players, if they start a game and don’t have the proper mind-set, it’s very difficult to turn that around."
Make a Life
"We make a living by what we get,
but we make a life by what we give."
— Winston Churchill
Tuesday, March 16, 2010
Daily Reflections for Highly Effective People
Stephen Covey said:
You can buy people’s hands, but you can’t buy their hearts. Their hearts is where their enthusiasm, their loyalty is. You can buy their backs, but you can’t buy their brains. That’s where their creativity is, their ingenuity, their resourcefulness.
I am personally persuaded that the essence of the best thinking in the area of time management can be captured in a single phrase: Organize and execute around priorities.
Effective people are not problem-minded; they are opportunity minded. They feed opportunity and starve problems.
You can’t be successful with other people if you haven’t paid the price of success with yourself.
If I were to summarize in one sentence the single most important principle I have learned in the field of interpersonal relations, it would be this: Seek first to understand, than to be understood.
“Time management” is really a misnomer — the challenge is not to manage time, but to manage ourselves.
Between stimulus and response is our greatest power — the freedom to choose.
[This posting was obtained from Bob Starkey's blog, HOOPTHOUGHTS, on March 16, 2010]
Thursday, March 11, 2010
Follow Your Dreams
Students, I was saddened to see this article about a good friend of mine, Merlin Olsen. I want you to pay special attention to the bold text, for herein lies a vital message for each of us pertaining to pursuing our dreams. He always chose the right. Throughout his high school, college, and professional career, he never did: drink, smoke, or use steroids or any harmful drugs. He enjoyed freedom because he did Choose the Right.
Merlin Olsen, Football Star, Commentator and Actor, Dies at 69
Published: March 11, 2010
Merlin Olsen, the Hall of Fame tackle who anchored the Los Angeles Rams’ Fearsome Foursome, the line that glamorized defensive play in the N.F.L., died early Thursday at a hospital in Duarte, Calif. He was 69.
His death was announced by his brother Orrin, who said he had been treated for mesothelioma, a form of cancer.
“Merlin had superhuman strength,” Jones told The Los Angeles Times in 1985. “If I was beating my man inside, he’d hold him up and free me to make the tackle. If he had to make an adjustment to sacrifice his life and limb, he would make it. A lot of the plays I made were because he or the others would make the sacrifice.”
Olsen felt that the Fearsome Foursome could have excelled in any era.
“We could all run,” Olsen said. “The other thing we had going for us was a rare chemistry. There was also a very special kind of unselfishness.”
Joining the Rams in 1962 from Utah State University, where he won the Outland Trophy as college football’s best interior lineman, Olsen spent his entire 15-year career with Los Angeles.
Olsen was voted to the Pro Bowl every year except for his final season, he was an all-N.F.L. selection six times, and he was chosen by the Maxwell Club of Philadelphia as the N.F.L.’s most valuable player in 1974. He was voted into the College Football Hall of Fame in 1980 and the Pro Football Hall of Fame in 1982. He was named, along with Jones, to the 75th anniversary all-N.F.L. team in 1994 in a vote by the news media and league personnel.
Olsen may have exuded a fearsome presence in his own right, but he was hardly a brute. He was named one of the nation’s top scholar athletes by the National Football Foundation in his senior year at Utah State and he received a master’s degree in economics while playing for the Rams.
Merlin Jay Olsen, a native of Logan, Utah, was born on Sept. 15, 1940. He was so awkward while pursuing sports in the ninth grade that a coach discouraged him from athletic aspirations.
“I was either stubborn or foolish, but I was unwilling to give up on my dreams,” The South Bend Tribune quoted him as telling a College Football Hall of Fame luncheon in 2007.
Olsen played a major role in reviving the football program at Utah State, leading the Aggies to appearances in the Sun Bowl and Gotham Bowl. He was one of the Rams’ two first-round draft picks in 1962, going third over all after they drafted quarterback Roman Gabriel.
Olsen was the N.F.L.’s rookie of the year.
Utah State brought an ailing Olsen back to the campus for a halftime ceremony of a basketball game in December 2009, when it announced it would dedicate the football field at its Romney Stadium as Merlin Olsen Field in 2010. The St. Louis Rams — the Los Angeles Rams’ successor franchise — honored Olsen at a home game that month although he was unable to attend because of his illness.
“My roughness and aggressiveness at certain times are prompted by my desire to be a better football player.
(Article taken from nytimes.com on March 11, 2010)
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/03/12/sports/football/12olsen.h
Tuesday, March 9, 2010
Selflessness and Compassion
Bob Starkey, in his blog hoopthoughts.blogspot.com, posted this statement by Phil Jackson:
"In basketball, as in life, true joy comes from being fully present in each and every moment, not just when things are going your way. Of course, it is no accident that things are more likely to go your way when you stop worrying about whether you’re going to win or lose and focus your full attention on what’s happening right this moment. The day I took over the Bulls, I vowed to create an environment based on the principles of selflessness and compassion."
Friday, March 5, 2010
Self-Confidence
"Somehow I can't believe that there are any heights that can't be scaled by a man who knows the secrets of making dreams come true. This special secret, it seems to me, can be summarized in four C s. They are curiosity, confidence, courage, and constancy, and the greatest of all is confidence. When you believe in a thing, believe in it all the way, implicitly and unquestionable."
Goals
"The victory of success is half won when one gains the habit of setting goals and achieving them."
Og Mandino
Believe in Yourself
"When you develop yourself to the point where your belief in yourself is so strong that you know you can accomplish anything you put your mind to, your future will be unlimited." | |
— Brian Tracy |
Visualization--Mental Pictures--Mental Movies
Visualization is mentally picturing in your mind, like taking mental pictures or mental movies in your head. Research shows that people who visualize effectively enhance their performance and raise their achievement level tremendously. For example, Dr. Maxwell Maltz in his book Psycho-Cybernetics: A New Way to Get More Living Out of Life shares a report from Research Quarterly about an experiment on the effects and results of mentally practicing shooting basketball free throws. The experiment organized students into three groups.
Group 1: This group was scored on the first day and then actually went onto the basketball court and practiced shooting free throws every day for 20 days. At the end of the 20-day trial, they were scored again.
Group 2: This group was scored on the first day and engaged in no sort of practice whatsoever for 20 days. At the end of the 20 days, they were scored again.
Group 3: This group was scored on the first day and then spent 20 minutes a day, mentally practicing, imagining that they were shooting the ball at the goal. When they mentally missed, they would imagine that they corrected their aim accordingly. At the end of the 20 days, they too were scored again.
RESULTS after the 20-day experiment:
Group 1, which actually practiced shooting 20 minutes everyday, improved in scoring 24 percent.
Group 2, which had no sort of practice whatsoever, showed no improvement.
Group 3, which mentally practiced in their heads using their imagination, improved 23 percent!
WOW! Students, can you see the power of taking mental pictures or mental movies to improve your skills, knowledge, and performance? Mentally see yourself qualifying for membership into the Academic Champion Club (The ACC). See yourself receiving an 'A' on a test. See yourself scoring a three-pointer in a basketball game. See your athletic team winning the state championship. See yourself obtaining your driver's license. See yourself attending graduation and receiving your diploma. See yourself attending the college or university of your choice and graduating. See yourself performing successfully in your chosen career field. See yourself enjoying a happy, successful family. The practice of visualization is powerful and is applicable for any situation. Regardless of what your past circumstances have been or what they currently may be, you can always visualize and forsee a magnificant future. Look forward and go forward toward your desired future.
LaVell Edwards calls this science "Self-visualization." He said, "Self-visualization encompasses not only what you are now but what you may become." Students, visualize your potential. Visualize yourself being really outstanding in your field. Visualize yourself being a great person living a great life! Practice visualization forever!
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