Lesson drawn from Dallas Mavericks NBA first title

It is always good to learn from sports even though one may not be a sport lover.

I've stopped following NBA since the retirement of Michael Jordan.
However, occasionally I do peep into the news finding out what is happening around.

This year NBA is another typical success story to learn.

Dallas Maverick has not been having any NBA Championship title in the franchise's 31-year history. The closest they got into was year 2006 NBA Finals, which happened that Miami Heat ended Maverick dreams with the title.

This year, the Maverick faced off with the Heat again.

The Heat "seems" to be superior than Maverick. The Heat has the power house trio, LeBron James, Dwyane Wade, Chris Bosh which led the team to 72 wins in the playoff seems to have far more advantages than the Maverick.

Dallas Maverick who had only 2 players remaining from the 2006 teams, started off the season with average result.  However, it has shown that it is beyond skills and being a star player when something is at stake.

The Maverick led by Dirk Nowitzki, together with Jason Terry has shown that when something matters to us most, it no longer how good you are but how much you want it.

The Maverick didn't start of the season with favorable results. However, when the going gets tough, the tough gets going. When the odds are against us, we just got to show the universe how much we want it.

Dirk Nowitzki who had a torn tendon in his finger and 39 deg C fever had led the team to their first NBA Championship title.

"In a lot of games we kept fighting back," Nowitzki said. "All the wins we got in the fourth quarter, at some point we were down and we kept plugging", Nowitzki

Nowitzki and the team just shown that they want the title badly than others. And most of the time, it is driven by a strong emotion (as I always mention in Ultimate Slimming Intensive workshop)

"And if you lose, you're going to get hammered. I got hammered the last 13 years. So hopefully this year I hope I can make the hammering go away for one year.", said Nowitzki when they are just one game away to clinch the title. He sure had a strong reason to do it.  No wonder he is the MVP of the finals.

Nowitzki does not have many super star players in the team but he had the best team.  A team that support each other no matter what it takes.

Nowitzki said, "You want to be a part of the best and so hopefully we can fulfill that and everything else is kind of a side note to me."

"(Jason Terry) got going early. That one timeout he said to me 'Keep pushing. Remember 2006'. I kept plugging and kept fighting.

In what ever games we play in life, it is important to surround ourselves with good team. The team that asks the best out from us and the people that keep reminding what we really want.

Many a times, it is not how good we are, it is how much we want it.

I watch Glory Road time after time, another basketball movie based on real story where the Texas Miners not only win the title but changing the history of basketball.

There are many lessons we can draw from the movie as well. An inspiration movie to remind us not to let reality affect us, but craft out our reality.

The winning is sweet because we put our heart and soul into it.
Mavs celebrate first NBA title with downtown parade

Successful Slimming starts from something easy.

Is slimming equals to success?

I have been conducting a number of trainings for corporate team bonding as well as personal health & wellness program.  I always enjoy training because it allows me to share my practical experience as well as learn the experience of the participants.

Many a times, the questions from the participants are good reminder for myself to the important principles that I am teaching.

Yesterday, I was conducting the third session of Ultimate Slimming Intensive workshop for Civil Service Club. It was the last session.

Although, this is not a big group, interestingly, it has lots of learning if the participants really allow themselves to listen and internalize the sharing session.

The uniqueness of Ultimate Slimming Intensive workshop is that it teaches the participants to REALLY enjoy food and stay slim at the same time.  It does not require participants to put on jogging shoe and workout hard 3~4 times a week.  This workshop also discourage participants to spend money on expensive health supplement on slimming pills.

The intent of the workshop is to empower participants to use their natural ability to stay slim or lose weight, a truly mind, body and emotion balance approach.

One of the module of the class is to set the participants perspective right to their successful slimming journey.  Interestingly, as we were sharing an important, scientific proven health information to the participants, there is a strong mental & emotional resistance from one of the participants.

It requires the participants to gradually changing their sleeping pattern.  Not instantaneously, but gradually.
However, from the questions asked by the participants, I knew that she has many "little voice" that may stop  her from achieving the goals she wanted in life, including having a slimmer and fit body.

Through out a short question and answering sessions, she kept finding stories, reasons (or excuses?) & evidence that stopping her to make a small little changes in her lifestyle.

The fact is, if her lifestyle is supporting her goal to be slim and fit, she wouldn't be in the classroom at the first place.

As Albert Einstein said, "Repeating the same thing and hoping to achieve different results, is called insanity".

For this participant, she probably have to re-examine her reason why she need to slim down.
Is slimming a strong intent for her?
Is it strong emotionally driven reason or just a wish or want, good to have goal?
My good guess would be, slimming is not her top 3 priority at all.

If successful slimming within 2 months is her top priority and she truly wants it, then she would have to understand her thinking pattern that is holding her back at her comfort zone.

Probably, there is Fear of changes.
During our coaching session, we work specifically with individual to understand their "little voice" by increasing their mind power.
At times, it would requires a slight modification of lifestyle to coach the participants to achieve autopilot slimming.

For this participants, she probably can start to repeat to herself that "I am willing to let go the good things in order to receive a better one" and thinking deeply what is the meaning of that statement to her.

In short, successful slimming start from something easy, what we tell ourselves everyday and thinking deeply what successful slimming really means to us.

Back to my questions at the start of this article, is slimming equals to success?
Yes, it means a lot to many. If we have habit of overcome our non-supporting beliefs in achieving goals, we have habit of being successful.

Where does success start first? - Part 2

With the previous posting regarding where does success start first.  There were some questions on how to have the "heart and mind".

There are a few aspects we have to look into first.

1) We need to see the reason or reasons WHY we want to achieve certain things.

As the common saying, when the WHY is big enough, the how would automatically come.
For the boy I mentioned in my previous post, he may be too young to really know WHY he wants to be successful in his academic.  Even if he knows the WHY, he would be probably distracted or thinks he does not want to be successful when facing difficulties.  This is not only happening to young children but adult as well.
Sometimes, adult may be even more well trained to give reasons or excuses that they no longer have "passion" into pursuing the things they thought they used to want it.

And it is no surprise, when facing adversity, we tend to rationalise, lay blame or even justify our actions, or lack of action, so that we feel good.

One way to give more clarity to WHY and WHAT we want to achieve is to visualize we already achieving that goal and make ourselves feeling that sense of achievement.  As we see and feel the goals we are achieving, if there is sense of excitement or fulfillment, we sure have the "heart" of wanting to be successful.

Some people call this visualization techniques while other call it focusing.   We might want to spend time with ourselves or the children to do this 5 to 10 mins a day.  It would probably, give us more clarity and we may discover new reasons why we want this goals.

2)  Another area is many a times, we are influenced by ours or somebody non-successful experience.  For example, the boy may have some experiences that he tried hard to be better but the results he had gotten is not favorable.

In that circumstances, he may attached a meaning (conclusion) to that non-successful experience.   For example, he may say these to himself, "I am not good enough in studying", "Study is hard", "I don't want to do better in my study because study is so hard" and etc.  I call this "crappy thought" and I liken this to the "bad crab" in our mind that want us to be mediocre.  I told the boy about the "crab story" so that he understand what is stopping him.   This is the "mind" portion.
Of course, it would be good to have his caregivers remind him from time to time about his "crab" in the mind.
It is all about having good habit of using supportive thought.  As an adult, having somebody holding us accountable is one good way to make sure we maintain and even raise our standards.

 I learnt this phrase from Anthony Robbin training, "nothing has a meaning until we attach the meaning to it".  The boy can use more empowering phrase to help me overcome that bad emotion.



3) Lastly, he probably has to start practicing self-talk that is empowering him.  He need to recognize that all of us are unique in our own way.  He can start to acknowledge the good things he had done and building his self-belief and confidence from there.  I call this "love thyself".  Celebration of every success, no matter how small, is the key to anchor our supportive self-beliefs.  Thus, success breeds success.

In fact, it is all about habit of practicing good thought and behavior.  It is the habit of doing it consistently everyday rather than do it sporadically huge amount that will produce the results.

Now we know a little more about "heart & mind" of being successful, it is about time to practise.

This is my recent reminder for myself and my friends, "Learning only starts when we are doing it, the experience we accumulate then is called knowledge".    Lets do it! Success to you!