When I was first presented with the opportunity to write a column for Coach, I was a little reluctant and concerned about what level of contribution I could bring to the table. I have (as most of us probably have been fortunate enough to) been to dinner with Coach, and at any given moment you never know what random person of some high level of success in his or her field could be sitting across from you telling war stories with Coach from back in the day. I often would sit back and ponder the thought of one day having such importance and influence as in which dinner companions have accumulated in their tenure.
I’m a 28-year-old basketball journeyman, who’s been lucky enough to migrate across the great plains of the hardwood to be a regular companion of Coach in his many ventures. The game has been apart of my life in every aspect. It helped me get to college and now is helping kick start my career and provide a living for myself. Sometimes I often wonder to myself through all the setbacks, successes, and journeys that I’ve endured through it all; what is the goal I hope to achieve? What is it that I want from it all? In sports, our goals are clearly defined for us. In basketball, the hoop serves as our goal providing us with a set number of points depending on the made shot. The outcome of the game depends on which opponent has the most points. In life though are goals aren’t clearly defined. There is no basket, net, or goal posts that clearly define if we’ve “Won”.
The current stage of the game I’m at is finding my goal; “The Goal of Finding Your Goal” is the tagline I would use. Some people have an easier time defining what there goals may be. Maybe they have set lower goals for themselves or just achieve them faster than others. As we get closer and closer to obtaining our wants we sometimes realize that isn’t what we really wanted at all. Our playing field becomes smaller; our goals become sharper and leaner. The experiences and the people along the journey have provided me with a working concept of where I want to be, how I want to be, and whom I would want to be like.
Working alongside of Coach (and others) has given me the opportunity to sharpen my vision for my goal. Being involved in so many aspects of a small business, a big corporation, and entrepreneurially has given me the opportunity of weeding out the things in which I’m not very good at or don’t enjoy and to focus in on where it is my strengths lie and ultimately what motivates me to get up everyday. I’ve done enough things wrong to learn from them, and hopefully I’ve done enough things right to improve on them, and now I must utilize all those past successes into creating a unique niche to separate myself from the others. I haven’t clearly defined what my goal should be yet. I have a general idea what is I would like to be doing, but don’t see a direct route to it. Maybe when I’m 38 I will look back at this column and laugh at the words I wrote, thinking back on what goals I set for myself that were in reality to far stretched and out of reach to achieve. Or hopefully, I’ll be breaking bread with Coach at dinner with a group of others and someone turns to me and asks, “Wow, your job sounds great. Now, how did you get involved in that?”
