A Quote by Les Wexner
The risk of failure is a very personal thing. One of the quotes I like, I think this came from the famous basketball coach from California - John Wooden - is that, "Successful people - winners - do everything necessary to prepare to win, without the certainty of winning." Everybody would do everything necessary to prepare to win if winning was a certainty. So you're willing to put yourself out publicly and privately and say, "I'm going to do this."
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Basketball
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California
Came
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Everybody
Everything
Failure
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Personal Thing
Prepare
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Quotes
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Wooden
Would
Yourself
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The people I coach are very successful people, so it's very hard for winners to not constantly win. Even if it's trivial and not worth it, we still want to win - because we love winning. It's a very deep habit.
I was at UCLA when John Wooden was the basketball coach. The next coach was Gene Bartow, who got fired for winning 90 percent plus of his games. He wasn't John Wooden. It's incredibly difficult to replace someone who has been seen as an icon.
Winning has a joy and discrete purity to it that cannot be replaced by anything else. Winning is important to any man's or woman's sense of satisfaction and well-being. Winning is not everything; but it is something powerful, indeed beautiful, in itself, something as necessary to the strong spirit as striving is necessary to the healthy character.
My core philosophy on winning and motivation is summed up by saying that you were born to win, but in order to be the winner you were born to be, you have to plan to win and prepare to win before you can expect to win.
I imagine God to be like my father. My father was always the voice of certainty in my life. Certainty in the wisdom, certainty in the path, certainty always in God. For me God is certainty in everything. Certainty that everything is good and everything is God.
To win is not important. To be successful is not even important. How to plan and prepare is crucial. When you plan very well and prepare very well, then success can come on the way. Then winning can come on your way.
We talk in coaching about "winners" - kids, and I've had a lot of them, who just will not allow themselves or their team to lose. Coaches call that a will to win. I don't. I think that puts the emphasis in the wrong place. Everybody has a will to win. What's far more important is having the will to prepare to win.
There is a reality to the primary process, and you don't win primaries by being ahead in national polls. You win them by winning Iowa, by winning New Hampshire, by winning South Carolina, winning Florida.
It's easy to play football when everything is going well and you are winning games back to back, winning, winning, it's the best feeling ever, you can go out there and express yourself you feel like you are not going to make mistakes.
Honestly, I think winning changes all of that. It doesn't matter where you are - it could be Timbuktu - if you win, people will watch, they'll follow and they'll support. It's my responsibility to put a team on the floor that will win, and that attracts players. Look at the teams that have been successful in the NBA. Yes, you have big, glamorous cities like L.A. But Miami has won, and so has San Antonio. Oklahoma City is a very successful team. They're not the biggest markets.
The common vision is winning - and winning a World Cup. We have a three-year plan - win the World Cup, win the Olympics, win the Euros - and the common agreement is you want to create a legacy and win the World Cup; then, everything else falls into place.
I've never felt my job was to win basketball games - rather, that the essence of my job as a coach was to do everything I could to give my players the background necessary to succeed in life.
We should tell our kids to just have fun, participate and not get bent on winning or losing. But every coach, when they say that, they say it tongue in cheek, 'Don't worry about winning': If you win I'll get you ice cream, but if you lose I'm going to pout in the car.
Right now my biggest thing is to improve my all-around game... If you don't win, something's wrong. Winning takes care of everything, so our biggest thing is winning.
You have an obligation as a player - as an athlete at any level - and it doesn't matter what sport it is. When you sign on, you sign on. You prepare that week to go win. I don't care about your schedule, or how many people got hurt - it doesn't matter. You owe it to the people in the building and guys in the huddle to prepare yourself to win.
If you've got a regular feed of winners, you control your mind to do it. It becomes a must. If you didn't have that regular flow of winning, whether you could get yourself to do that, I don't know. It's a lot easier when you know the next day you can win and you can win and win, it's worth doing it.
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