Shoot Your Shot Read online

  Imagine if Michael Jordan believed his coaches were right to cut him from the varsity basketball team in his sophomore year of high school. We may have never witnessed arguably the greatest basketball player to ever wear an NBA uniform.

  We would’ve missed out on seeing MJ soar from the free throw line, lead the Bulls to six NBA titles, hit the game winning shot in Game 6 of the 1998 NBA Finals, or last, but certainly not least, see him and the rest of the Looney Tunes bunch defeat the MonStars in Space Jam. (Say what you want about the movie but Space Jam is a classic and a relic of my childhood).

  Michael Jordan is just one example, but just think about the people (athletes and non-athletes) who you admire or look up to. What if these impactful individuals gave up on their dreams or their passions based on the opinions and disapproval of others? They would have never reached their full potential, would not have become the individuals they always aspired to be, nor would they be the people who inspire you to do more with your life.

  Don’t downgrade your dreams to fit someone else’s reality. What you accomplish in life is a direct result of your actions, your thoughts, and your perception of yourself. You are within arm’s reach of attaining the life you want to live. However, you have to be willing to extend beyond the limitations you have placed on yourself and the limitations others have placed on you. You, and only you, are the sole decision maker in what your story is going to be. When you change how you view yourself, you will then be able to change the course of your life.

  Take some time for reflection. Visualize the life experience you want for yourself in profound detail. Write down your goals and aspirations. Print out pictures of what you want and put them on a vision board for you to reflect on daily. Develop affirmations, or positive statements, about yourself and recite them every day. See yourself in your desired state of dwelling and believe that it is possible to attain it.

  Sometimes we get in our own way, especially when we believe we do not have the power to change our conditions. This error in thinking must be eliminated if you are to live your best life. Make the commitment to work for what it is that you want in order to make the new and improved story that you tell yourself, and the one you replay over and over in your head, a reality.

  Another action that is important to carry out while pursuing your best life is guarding your speech. Proverbs 18:21 (NIV) states, “The tongue has the power of life and death.” Be mindful to never speak of yourself in a negative or discouraging way. Only speak life into yourself and about how you are advancing on your way to living your best life. At some point, you are going to have to make the choice between the life you’ve grown accustomed to and the life you want to live. Truly believe without a shadow of a doubt that what you want can and will come to fruition. See yourself where you want to be and hold tightly onto to that vision with everything you’ve got.

  Your age, race, gender, background, or geographic area has nothing to do with what you can or cannot accomplish. Only your commitment, the work you put in, an unrelenting faith, and the story you tell yourself about yourself matter.

  You may have this preconceived notion that living an abundant life is only possible for those who satisfy certain prerequisites (i.e., coming from a wealthy family, going to the best schools, living in a particular area code, etc.). If this were the case then only a select number of people, from a certain area, with a particular background, and specific qualifications would be living the lives they’ve envisioned for themselves. We know that is not true because we have witnessed otherwise in sports, business, music, and many other industries.

  There are multitudes of individuals from a variety of different backgrounds who are making an impact on the world and who are doing what they love to do. You can do the same. Don’t let your history, a false narrative, or unfavorable circumstances dictate your outcomes.

  Take control over your life. Dispel the myth that your background determines your outcomes. Believe in yourself even when others don’t believe in you. Cease living your life according to the rules that someone else said you must abide by because of his or her inability to see their own potential for greatness. Because honestly, that’s what it really comes down to when others try to limit you. If someone cannot or refuses to recognize the greatness they possess within themselves, what makes you think he or she will see the greatness within you? They’re not going to.

  You may not have the typical background for a particular career or endeavor, but don’t let that be what stops you from pursuing what it is that you want in life. Go get it if that’s what you really want. You are fully capable of attaining any and everything you could possibly dream of irrespective of where you come from, your family history, or even your past actions.

  Regardless of statistics.

  Regardless of the lies you’ve been telling yourself for so long.

  Regardless of the misguided and ill-informed opinions of others.

  Regardless of what you have or have not done up to this point in your life.

  You are able to do anything you set your mind to.

  You living your best life starts with separating yourself from anything that does not help you become better or attain more. Changing the rules on what controls you, ultimately changes the rules on what you are able to control. Break free from those imaginary shackles called limitations that you’ve placed on your potential so long ago. Get out of your own way so you can get to where you want to go.

  2

  Take Responsibility For Your Own Outcomes

  Accountability is essential to personal growth as well as team growth. How can you improve if you are never wrong? If you don’t admit a mistake and take accountability for it, you’re bound to make the same one again.

  PAT SUMMITT

  8-time NCAA women’s basketball champion as a coach, 7-time NCAA Coach of the Year, 2nd most career wins in NCAA Division I history, and the Naismith Coach of the 20th Century

  After virtually every NBA game, media personnel interview the coaches and players from both the winning and the losing teams. When coaches or players from the losing team are interviewed, more often than not, they will attribute the loss to missteps made by the team as a whole, or proceed to place the full responsibility of the loss on themselves.

  Nevertheless, in rare instances we see players and coaches place the blame for a loss on bad calls made by the referees, an opposing player, their teammates, the fans, the court, the arena, the rim, or the ball. Anybody or anything other than where the responsibility actually falls upon—themselves. As expected, that team usually does not accomplish their goal of winning a championship (or even make the playoffs for that matter) because they fail to take responsibility for their circumstances.

  Nothing can ever be changed in your life unless responsibility is assigned to the appropriate party. And the appropriate party in every instance is, and always will be, YOU. You are currently in this stage of life because of you, and only you. Some of us refuse to accept this. We’ve convinced ourselves that it is everyone and everything else’s fault for our current standing in life.

  In order to progress in life and get out of the current circumstances you may find yourself in, you have to take responsibility for everything that has happened up to this point in your life. Own up to your own stuff. The failed relationships. The struggling business. Your inability to get a job or a promotion. Not meeting your weight loss or fitness goals. Not making the team. Not graduating from high school or college. Not going on that dream trip. In every situation that you find yourself in, you are always the common denominator. Therefore, you, and only you, have the power to transform the outcomes in your life.

  When you accept that you are the master of your own fate, you will then be able to make the necessary changes that will propel your life to the next level. But first, you have to get out of your own way.

  Getting out of your own way not only means removing limitations and getting out of a toxic headspace as we discussed in the previous section. It
also means accepting responsibility for everything that has happened up to this point and everything that is currently going on in your life. When you place the blame for your circumstances on everyone and everything else, you are basically saying you have no control over anything that happens in your life. Even though this particular life experience is specific to you.

  Too often, we place the blame on outside factors for our own lack of attaining certain things. Or make excuses for why things don’t go the way we want them to.

  “If my job paid me more, I could afford the lifestyle I want.”

  “If I didn’t have all these kids and family members to take care then I’d have the time to follow my dreams.”

  “No jobs will hire me because ‘the man’ is holding me down.”

  “My parents didn’t prepare me for school or help with my homework so that’s why I’m failing out.”

  “My body’s metabolism isn’t the same as it was when I was younger so it’s impossible to get this weight off of me.”

  “He/she treats me terribly and isn’t willing to change, that’s why the relationship isn’t working.”

  Yada. Yada. Yada.

  Excuse after excuse after excuse.

  We’re all guilty. No one is exempt. Countless times, we’ve used excuses to some extent to avoid responsibility for our outcomes.

  Taking the lines directly from the poem Excuses (author unknown), “Excuses are tools of incompetence used to build bridges to nowhere and monuments of nothingness, and those who use them seldom specialize in anything else.”

  If you don’t want to put in the necessary work to change your circumstances, making illegitimate excuses is probably the best thing you could ever do. Making an excuse and misplacing blame are active ways of avoiding taking responsibility and holding yourself accountable. Excuses spare you from really evaluating yourself and your approach to a specific situation. They also hinder growth and block you from your potential. Be prepared to remain right where you are because you cannot progress in life by continually making excuses or placing unnecessary blame on others.

  You think that just because I’m writing this, I’m exempt? Not at all. In high school, I finally began coming into my own as a basketball player. However, I thought I deserved more recruiting interest than I was generating. At the end of my senior season, I didn’t receive one scholarship offer to play collegiately. And so, my very own blame game commenced.

  I mean it couldn’t have been me. No, I did everything in my power to earn an athletic scholarship. So it had to be someone (if not everybody) else’s fault.

  I blamed my coaches for not advocating on my behalf and for not doing enough to market me to college basketball programs.

  I blamed my father for not sending me to the top camps or signing me up for AAU teams.

  I blamed a former teammate for transferring to another school because when he left, college coaches stopped coming to our games.

  I even blamed my mother for being 5’3 because if she was just a couple inches taller I would’ve been at least 6’0 and, oh without a doubt, I would be getting recruited by all the top basketball programs in the nation. Scratch that, I may have even gone straight from high school to the NBA had she been taller. (I am not making this up. This was really my thought process.)

  I made excuses and placed unwarranted blame on others because, in all actuality, I knew deep down that I really didn’t do everything in my power to play basketball at the next level.

  Truth be told, I was good, but I wasn’t that good. I didn’t work on my game like I should have—until it was too late. I didn’t save money or raise funds in order to sponsor my own way to camps, into leagues, or onto an AAU team. I didn’t talk to my coach or my athletic director regularly in order to map out an approach to get coaches to come to my high school games and see me play. I didn’t reach out to coaching staffs personally or attempt to build a good rapport with them.

  I can go on and on with a laundry list of things I didn’t do but point blank, I just didn’t handle my business like I was supposed to. As opposed to being painfully truthful and honest with myself at the time, I looked for external entities to confront and blame. And because I opted to place blame elsewhere instead of doing what was necessary on my own, I found myself in the predicament that I was in: not being recruited to play basketball collegiately. I was the sole person responsible for my circumstances, no matter how much I tried to avoid this reality.

  The moment you accept responsibility for your current standing, you are then in a position to fully take charge of your life and change the things that you view as unfavorable. Do what is necessary in order to achieve your goals, without assigning blame to external entities when things don’t go your way.

  You are in full control of your life. Get rid of excuses. Stop playing the blame game. Stop playing the victim. Take 100% responsibility for your life. Only then will you be able to achieve the results that you desire.

  3

  Put In The Work And Prepare Adequately

  I’m going to be a success at whatever I choose because of my preparation. By the time the game starts, the outcome has been decided. I never think about having a bad game because I am prepared.

  DAVID ROBINSON

  2-time NBA champion, 10-time NBA All-Star, 1995 NBA MVP, and a 2009 Naismith Basketball Hall of Fame inductee

  Proper planning and preparation prevents piss poor performance. This military adage, known as the Seven Ps, clearly communicates that your performance is based on prior planning and preparation. If you fail to plan (or prepare) then you plan (or prepare) to fail. The work you put in and the critical steps you take prior to completing your objective dictate whether you will be successful or unsuccessful.

  The greatest basketball players in the world understand that in order to perform effectively on the court, they must put in all the unseen hours and underappreciated work before even stepping foot onto the court for a regulation NBA game. Studying film, lifting weights, running drills, putting up shots, eating right. This is the work that is necessary if they want to take their games to the next level and separate themselves from their competitors. These actions provide them with a competitive advantage because everybody is not willing to put in the time and make the necessary sacrifices in order to be the best. Others would rather be in the club, scrolling through social media timelines, and hanging with friends as opposed to working on themselves and their craft.

  In whatever endeavor you are pursuing, preparation is the key if you want to have longstanding success. In order to be successful at anything in life, you must prepare adequately. You must be willing to put in the work and go that extra mile even when you don’t feel like it. The degree to which you prepare is always on full display in your performance and the results of your endeavors. You can always tell how a person prepared by observing their outcomes.

  The grade you get on an exam. Whether you passed a test to earn a certification. Whether you made the team. Whether you got the job offer. Whether you met your fitness goals. Whether you received the business grant. Your results are reflections of the degree to which you prepared and the amount of work you put in prior to completing a particular task. Essentially, the end product always has a direct correlation with your degree of preparation. How you prepare is how you perform.

  An NBA regular season is generally stretched out across an 8-month period, leaving about 4 months for players to prepare and improve their game in the offseason. The main goal for a player in the offseason is (or at least should be) to come back better than they were the previous season in order to, first off, keep their job, but to also improve the likelihood of earning more playing time, getting a contract extension or a max contract offer, becoming a key or star player, making the all-star team, and ultimately, helping their team win a championship.

  The league is comprised of about 400 players. One would think every single one of them would have an incentive to work extremely hard in order to retain their jobs due t
o the high turnover in the league in addition to having a desire to accomplish the goals listed above, right? Wrong. Some players are content with just making a roster, collecting a hefty paycheck, and enjoying the perks of being a professional athlete for a few years.

  Do they possess talent? Of course. But the issue is not their talent, it is their unwillingness to go the extra mile to standout and set themselves apart from the rest of their peers.

  There is a reason why players in the league have the distinction of being superstars, starters, regular rotation players, or benchwarmers. Yes, natural ability has something to do with it but the title a player garners, the role they play on a team, and the amount of playing time they get is primarily due to the fact that some of them are willing to put in more work and prepare more than others.

  You know how the saying goes: Hard work beats talent when talent doesn’t work hard.

  That is exactly why you see top-rated players coming out of high school or college flop in the NBA and athletes who flew under-the-radar end up becoming successful. Some relied solely on their natural abilities and got complacent thinking that their talent would carry them for the entirety of their careers while others prepared adequately and consistently worked at their craft.

  Ask yourself, do you want to be like one of those complacent players and just scrape by in your life? Or do you want to be like those players who are willing to do the necessary work that elevates them above the rest of the field? I hope you choose to be the latter and put in the required effort to get to where you want to be.