Toughness

--From Monday's 9/22 Newsletter

I recently finished a book by former college basketball player and coach and current ESPN analyst Jay Bilas. The book was called Toughness and defined true toughness, on the basketball court and in life, as being able to persevere through difficulty and do what is right. One of the characteristics of toughness, as described by the author, is focus—focus on one task at a time. In today’s world of multi-tasking it seems like we spend more time dividing our attention among many different tasks than actually focusing on any of them.

Bilas shared a story about focus in his book from when he was in high school and spent his summer building houses for his father’s contracting company. Bilas was a gopher and had to run items from the ground, up a ladder, to men working on the roof. On his first day, he decided he would use his youth, energy, and strength to carry more material in less trips. Climbing up the ladder in a hurry, he missed a rung and crashed to the bottom. After checking to make sure he was OK, his father told him, “Jay, you cannot reach the top of the ladder in one step, but you can lose focus and get to the bottom in one step.”

I shared this story with the students at morning assembly today and pointed out how many times in our lives we have known this to be true—you do all the steps in a math problem but you carelessly add numbers incorrectly and get the problem wrong; you take notes all through a class and start daydreaming about what you’ll do after school and you miss something; or you are sitting in Church and start thinking about what you have to do later and miss an opportunity to hear God.

There are many things competing for our attention, so my mission this week to the students is for them to help one another stay focused on the present. I showed them a hand signal they can use to help one another. Ask them to show you when they get home. Hopefully this reminder will help them stay focused on the important things in life and develop mental toughness.