The Heart Of A Champion

I know, I know, I had a post here recently about putting sports to the side to create a clearer focus. However, the city of Chicago was essentially at a standstill this past Sunday from about 2pm on as the Bears defeated the Saints to go to their first Super Bowl in over 20 years. Even some of my mentors decided to reward their normal action habit with watching their hometown team punch their ticket to Miami. In my business, we tend to wall ourselves off a little from the thinking of the world, but sports tends to transcend, especially in areas dealing with leadership, overcoming, and victory.

All year long in Chicago, and actually, across the Country, the starting quarterback for the Bears has been maligned for somewhat inconsistent play. It is statistically true that Rex Grossman had a couple of games that were well below par. I mean, some terrible performances. However, his solid performances outnumberd his bad ones 3-1 and most importantly, he was sound in a first round playoff win and got the job done in the win that put them in the Super Bowl.

So many people will say, "but look at this game, and look at that game," and I agree - I prefer consistency over inconsistency. But, I'll take winning over losing regardless of how you get there. I don't care how good your defense is, if you quarterback is going to lose the game for you, it's going to happen. The Bears are 15-3 right now and although the defense has played a major part, they haven't been all of it. They've won by 26 in a shutout, as well as putting up 40 three times, and between 30-39 points four times. Only one of those eight games was closer than a touchdown. They've also got two other 10 point victories when they didn't light up the scoreboard. That's not all defense and running.

Here's my point: so many of us have been raised on the concept that you have to avoid failure. Most of us are in positions where if we make a mistake it can cost us our job. That we shouldn't even start something until we know where we might stumble. Now if you're a doctor trying to save a life, or a lawyer trying to keep an innocent person from jail, not making a mistake could be critical. But, what do you think that doctor was doing in medical school? You know there had to be some errors in the classroom or in the learning process. Same with law.

If you failed every homework assignment along your way to the final exam, but learned all of your mistakes along the way so that you passed the final exam, you'd probably still get an "F" in the class. Even though you now know what you didn't know when doing the original homework. We leave very little room for failing forward in this Country. Congratulations to you Rex Grossman, for failing forward into your first Super Bowl.