Big “Mo”

Whenever I evaluate anyone I always consider attitude as the single most important thing. One thing about attitude that I really try to instill is that we all should have a winning attitude. It is vital to anyone’s success as well as the well-being of the organization. I constantly mentor myself about attitude. Recently I was getting more and more and more intense. I have way more than I can do and not enough people to whom I can delegate. When in these situations, a danger exists that what I do will no longer be fun. When that happens, thing go south quickly. I can get discouraged and my winning attitude turns to negativity and defeatism; not to mention affecting those team members around me.

Lately I have refocused and spend significant amounts of time self-addressing my attitude and working hard on keeping my work fun whereby I can retain my winning attitude. I try to absorb setbacks in stride and keep my eye on trying to have fun each day. I immediately noticed a big change for the better in accomplishing more with less effort after just a few days of concentrated effort.

This reminds me of an incident when playing football in high school. Our football team had to play Reform Alabama just across the state line from our little school in Mississippi. In Reform Alabama they take football seriously and everyone on our team knew it. Their reputation preceded them and the guys on the team talked about it on the bus ride over there and we were not looking forward to playing them. When we got there it got worse. Every player they had looked to be 35 years old or older, (and some probably were). They had full beards and looked like professional wrestlers. I have no idea where they found those guys but undoubtedly they came from deep within the woods and probably loaded pulpwood trees by hand. All had physiques like gorillas, sloping heads and appeared to be inbred. I say that because they reminded me of pit bulldogs that have been inbred for the purpose of developing them into ferocious fighting machines even to death. We were no match for them. Their football team was ten deep in every position and was possibly bigger than our entire school. (Maybe a slight exaggeration, but you get the picture.)

At half time when we went into the locker room, we were far behind and had been soundly beaten and not just on the scoreboard. One of our players who had been particularly and repeatedly brutalized by one of their players asked the coach not to put him back in and was actually crying. That was not a particularly intelligent move on his part because our coach was more to be feared than that entire football team. After the coach’s tirade and slamming us into lockers all over that room, we played with renewed vigor in the second half. I would like to say that our new attitude enabled us to soundly defeat them in the second half, but sadly they still won. We did however, come back and fight hard and made our coach proud. They knew they had been in a fight; especially the guy who had brutalized our player. Our entire line-backing squad, (of which I was a part), gang tackled him on the first play of the second half and broke his collar bone.

Momentum in football and in life is a powerful thing; it is often referred to as the “Big Mo”. Sometimes just one really big play can turn the entire game around and get the “Mo-Jo” working. You may not always win but you never lose. Huh? Just giving it our best and playing hard to win makes us winners. We cannot win every game or every deal, but we can play like we are going to win and give it our absolute best for ourselves and our teammates. The Bible instructs us to run every race in such a way as we may win it. The Bible tells us that others do it to win a perishable crown; for example the Super Bowl. It goes on to tell us that we should do it to win an imperishable crown, (spending eternity with Jesus Christ in paradise), and to do it with certainty and not uncertainty.

1 Cor.9:24
Do you not know that those who
run in a race all run, but one receives
the prize? Run in such a way that
you may obtain it.