Friday; January 7

John Madden is proof to me that it is difficult for me to completely dislike anything. Coach Madden was a Raider – and I don’t like the Raiders. Growing up as a Broncos fan, silver and black were colors of anathema. I think that I disliked just about everything about the Raiders – except John Madden. Since the coach’s passing last week, I have been doing some reading about his observations about life and one stuck out to me. Interesting, it isn’t a great life lesson – or maybe it is. Tucked in with a bunch of other quotes was the observation, “When your arm gets hit, the ball is not going to go where you want it to.”. While this simplistic observation about a quarterback throwing the ball might be a “no-duh” moment, it also leads to the question, now what? When the quarterback’s arm is hit – and the ball doesn’t do what he intended to do – he has to adjust. If he throws an interception off the deflection, he needs to make sure the defensive guy doesn’t turn it into a pick-six. If it is merely an incomplete pass, he can’t fuss and whine about the failure, he has to start the process over and hope for better results the next time. To be a good quarterback, you have to be able to make adjustments and have a short memory.
When life disrupts us, it is easy to focus on what went wrong. We might have had perfect form right up to the time we didn’t, but at that point it doesn’t matter anymore. It is tempting to pout and say that we intended to get things correct, but the key to success is picking ourselves up and moving on. We might want to over-analyze our conditions or complain about them, but that doesn’t help us do want needs to be done to win the game.
There won’t be another John Madden, so we might as well learn something from the one we did have. Let’s learn to keep moving forward and be successful no matter where life takes us nor how many tries it takes to get us there.

Think About It!

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