REFLECTION
I played organized football for 32 years. I would say that I was excellent for 19 of them.
2004 was the first year I can confidently say I reached a level of excellence at the quarterback position. 2003 there were times when I was very good. 2002, I was ascending. 2001, I was good and getting better game to game. 2000, I was average. In college, I was slightly above average. Steady, reliable. Most commentators and talent evaluators would say I didn’t “wow” a lot of people, thus the 6th round selection as the 199th pick.
But I worked at it. For years. Excellence didn’t happen overnight.
Prodigies aside, nobody starts out excellent. Most don’t start out even thinking about excellence. First, you just want to belong—as part of the team, the group, the business, the relationship, whatever it is. Then you want to play. Once you’ve started to play, then you want to win. And as a byproduct of your desire to play and to win, you naturally want to get better. There are few better experiences in the world than the fun you can have getting better at something you’re obsessed with.
Still, for most people excellence or greatness are not part of their inner monologue in those early, formative years because it feels like a status that is conferred upon you, not a level of performance that you can actively try to achieve. When playing pickup basketball at the park or messing around in your driveway, for instance, you might dream of being like Jordan or Bird or LeBron or Steph, but you’re never thinking about becoming them. That feels impossible.
Yet, as you get older, the more you work at something—whether it’s a sport, an instrument, a business idea, a trade, or a relationship—the more possible excellence appears to become. It gets demystified. You realize, it’s a process. A progression.
You work to get better, you shoot for perfection, and you settle for excellence.
With the understanding that you will never be perfect, I think the simplest way to look at excellence is as the far end of a gradient defined by competence–by doing more good things than bad things. Average is 50:50, poor is 20:80, excellence starts at 85:15, and the more you move toward 100%, the more that greatness enters the chat.
But the real question is, what’s the path to 85:15?
LESSON
In sports, with its deep emphasis on metrics and statistics, there’s an assumption that excellence is mostly (or entirely) defined by on-field performance: completion percentage, batting average, greens-in-regulation, points-per-game, etc. Excellent players play excellently and win a lot of games as a result—that’s the idea.
While there’s definite truth to that, sustained excellence didn’t arrive for me until I was able to achieve peak performance (85:15) along all three of the major dimensions that I often talk about–physical, mental, and emotional–and then those dimensions started to work in harmony with each other at an equally high rate of success.
Physically strong and pliable…
Mentally sharp and adaptable…
Emotionally centered and resilient…
All at the same time.
This formula for excellence has held true for me in all other areas of my life, and I would argue it can hold true for anyone who follows it in pursuit of their purpose. To do so successfully requires a clear sense for where you need to put your time and energy. It also demands an increasing amount of humility and self-awareness. As you get better and better at something, it can be easy to think that you have less to work on or that you’ve got everything figured out. The reality is that there will always be things you can improve upon. You can improve daily processes. You can be more efficient. You can find ways to do more, to add skills, to reach further.
As Socrates said, “the more I know, the more I realize I know nothing.” Self-awareness is the ability to recognize what those areas of ignorance and improvement are. Humility is the capacity to acknowledge that you’ve learned a lot, but to recognize that there is so much more to learn, and that opportunities for excellence spring up all around us when we’re willing to say “I don’t know” and ask for help.
Indeed, even the most humble, self-aware, self-motivated people need help getting to the place where excellence can be achieved. They need people to push them outside of their comfort zone. That has certainly been the case for me over the years, whether it’s coaches or friends or teammates or mentors.
The other side of your comfort zone is where all the growth lives. If you want to improve, you have to be willing to try something new, then fail. And when you fail, if you don’t quit, you learn. When you learn, you try that same thing again but in a different way, and eventually you find the process that leads to success, which helps you gain the self-confidence necessary to stay on that flywheel of self-improvement until it spins you to a level of excellence you never thought possible.
APPLICATION
There’s a powerful line in one of the speeches that Nick Saban used to give to his teams at the beginning of each season: “it’s the human condition to be average…It’s the human condition to survive, to get along.” Championship teams, he says, don’t settle for average, or for survival. They pursue excellence, greatness. They maximize their potential. They don’t just want to survive, they want to thrive.
The natural tendency toward mediocrity that Coach Saban is pointing to is one of the great impediments to excellence. If you are a high achiever or an elite performer with aspirations to greatness, mediocrity is your most dangerous enemy because it’s so comfortable and so familiar from other areas of life.
I ate a healthy breakfast this morning, so I can eat whatever I want for lunch.
I worked out today, so I don’t need to workout tomorrow.
I read yesterday, so I don’t need to read today.
You throw one good pass, you throw one bad pass.
One birdie, one bogey.
This ‘one for you, one for me’ mentality is a devil’s bargain. No matter how hard you work during your “on” days, your “off” days net you out to average, to 50:50, at best.
And look, there will be instances when being mediocre, or even below average, are just fine. When your actions and habits accurately reflect your priorities, you will naturally be less good at the things you care less about. Swimming and surfing were like that for me, even golf to a certain extent. I’ve re-engaged with these hobbies in the last few years, but when I was still playing. I didn’t prioritize them so I wasn’t as good at them as I would have liked, and I was okay with that.
The problem comes when you’ve convinced yourself that it’s okay being mediocre at something you really care about. It’s especially problematic when competition is involved. There will be times when your work habits don’t rise to the level of your priorities and you’re still able to achieve some meaningful goals. But if excellence is your target and you have a mission that’s greater than yourself (like team sports), when other people are gunning for what you want, being “average” doesn’t simply produce mediocrity—it often results in failure.
Last season, for example, the Lions, Vikings, Bucs, Falcons, Colts and Ravens went 9-8 or 8-9 and they all missed the playoffs. This weekend at the Masters, see where four rounds of even par golf might land you on the leaderboard–or if you’d even make it to Saturday.
My buddy Mike Repole, from Nobull, always says if you want to know how to become a billionaire, just work 20 hours a day, seven days a week, on one thing for 20 straight years. That’s an extreme example of achieving excellence, obviously, but it’s a valuable one when you contrast it to the attitudes of people who’ve allowed the comfort of mediocrity to swallow them up.
I had a young athlete tell me recently about how tired he was from the stress of practice, the obligations of life, and the expectations of the people around him. I had empathy for the kid, he seemed to really be struggling with it. But in my mind, I was thinking, “That’s life! It’s hard. Life is filled with stress at every turn.” This kid was 22, 23 years old, a gifted athlete with big dreams. This is just the beginning of the stress he’s going to experience, especially if he continues to improve and progress toward excellence.
That stress he was talking about is the demarcation line between comfort and discomfort. If he wants to grow and be excellent, he’s gotta get comfortable being uncomfortable on the other side of that line. He’s gotta learn everything that struggle and failure are capable of teaching him. What he can’t do is retreat back into his comfort zone, back toward mediocrity.
He has to manage his fight or flight response. Because we’re conditioned at a young age to fit in, to stay in our lane and only do things we're good at, most people choose flight when they’re doing something new or hard, and they’re confronted by the possibility of failure or public embarrassment. It’s the survival instinct Coach Saban talks about. What I wanted to say to this young athlete, what I’m saying to you now, is that the whole point of pursuing excellence is to not be most people. It’s to fight when things get harder, not flee. It’s to put it more work, not less. It’s not going to kill you, even if you still fail. Don’t run from the stress, run through it.
But that’s up to you.
Fundamentally, the path from mediocrity to excellence is defined by consistent daily accountability. First and foremost to yourself, since you are the easiest person to break your promise to. But once you’ve made a habit of keeping your promise, then it’s accountability to your team, your family, your business, your fans or customers. It’s accountability to the standards of integrity, honesty and effort that you have set individually and collectively. And it’s accountability to your goals and your potential.
Finally, it’s surrounding yourself with people who love you and will tell you the truth when things are going off track. This weekend at Augusta, the best golfers in the world are going to be surrounded by thousands of those people who, through their reactions after each shot, will let every golfer on the course know exactly how their round is going. Their job, just like your job, is simply to listen, to learn, to adjust, and then, hopefully, to say LFG.
