One of the great things about this life is that we get to learn from one another and share our thoughts and ideas. One of the other California Santa Rosa missionaries shared this story with me recently and I liked it so much I asked him if he wouldn't mind writing it down for my blog. So with Elder Balaich's permission I present the first of what (I hope) will be several guest posts. Take it away Elder Balaich!
As a high school athlete I had the great opportunity and blessing to be coached by some great men. (One of which even played in the NFL for some years then after an injury went on to professionally lift weights and body build.) One summer, this coach taught me something great, something I’ll never forget.
It was early morning workouts; we lifted, ran drills, conditioned, and things like that. One drill is called the standing broad jump. Basically, you try to jump out as far as you possible can. This drill is done often at combines to display an athlete’s explosiveness and to compare athletes side by side to see who can jump further.
To practice this drill, we all went into the gym to the basketball court. We got in a line behind the baseline and just simply jumped out as far as we could. We each did this a few times, with coach not saying anything out of the ordinary but observing closely like he always did.
After this we moved on to some other drills, the L-drill, shuttle drill, ladders—things like that. Then we went to the baseline to once again do standing broad jumps. As before we all did the drill. Simply jumping from the baseline got boring so we moved to the half-court line instead, doing the same drill. This time though, Coach brought out a cone. He watched how far most of us were jumping and set it a few inches beyond where we landed. Then he challenged us to jump beyond the cone. Some of us did and some of us didn’t. Seemingly satisfied, he had us move on once again to some different drills.
But once again, we came back to the broad jump. We all lined up single file on the baseline and coach set up his cone a good distance beyond the baseline and said to all of us, basically something to the sorts of,
“Okay, we’ve practiced this off and on all morning. Now you all MUST jump past this cone I’ve set up here. ALL of you HAVE to do it. I know that all of you can, it’s up to you right now to just do it.”
We all took our turns, one by one. And all of us succeeded. We all jumped beyond the cone. Coach was all sorts of excited. What he knew—that we didn’t—what he had slyly done to make us all better, still sticks with me to this day. None of us had noticed but Coach had been measuring how far we jumped with his steps. Measuring the first attempts and then pushing us a little bit farther the second time. Finally, for the last time, he measured the furthest we had jumped and stepped a few feet beyond that and placed the cone there. Further than any of us had jumped.
None of us knew he was measuring us or even pushing us further. Until at last, when all of us jumped past the last cone he let us all know what we had just done.
"It's all in your heads!" I remember him saying.
The first time we were told to jump as far as we could, we all put some effort into it. But the big difference between the first feeble attempt and the last, great success was that a mark had been set.
A goal was made and failure was not an option. We didn't care about how far we had jumped before because we didn't even really know. But with that cone set there, we could see how far we must jump.
After we all jumped past the cone on our last try, coach took quite a few steps back towards the baseline, measuring carefully and standing in one spot where he said,
“This is the furthest any of you jumped the first time.”
The difference was so big that it has always been a reminder to me of how much impact setting a good goal can truly make—as opposed to simply going out and just “doing our best”.
The conditions of the drill never changed, neither did our technique. Sure we had a few practice jumps but the difference between the first and last jump is that the greatness of personal achievement was obtained by setting up a piece of plastic on a hardwood gym floor, a simple cone, a profound goal.
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