PNTV: Win Forever by Pete Carroll (#159)

Hi, this is Brian. Welcome back to Philosopher's Notes tv. Today we've got another great book, Win Forever by coach Pete Carroll. He wrote this after leaving USC with the extraordinary success he had there before he brought the Seahawks to the super bowl and won. They had won something like nine games in the two seasons before he arrived in Seattle. And within a few short years he had them at the top of the game. Amazing. So he called a shot. I listened to this before the first super bowl they were in and re read it recently. Just a good guy and I'm excited to share more about his philosophy. Win Forever Philosopher's Note. We've got a bunch of ideas here. We have five of them. Jump straight in. Coach Maslow is the first big idea. Coach Maslow. So Pete Carroll, deeply inspired by Abraham Maslow psychology of being. We just did one of these episodes on Abraham Maslow's psychology of being. So as we discussed there, and as I imagine you know, Abraham Maslow was focused on the hierarchy of needs. His basic idea was as you get the foundation set, you aspire to your highest potential to self actualize. And Pete read that and he just had a profound experience with it and realized, you know what his whole point and his job was as a coach was to create the environment where his players could self actualize, could maximize their potential. And that's what his coaching became all about. Right. So Coach Maslow on the football field is how I like to think of it. Pretty cool idea. That's the first idea. The second idea, and we'll come back to that throughout, the second idea is this idea of creating a winning philosophy. So I'll actually go here to the third big idea. Pete was fired five times before he got to USC and experienced his extraordinary success. Then of course, moving on to Seattle, five times he was fired. That's amazing. Five times. And he realized after he was fired by the Patriots, he didn't quite have a philosophy in place, but he realized that that adversity was key for him. As unfun as it was to move his family from here to there and to experience that less than awesome moments, he needed it to catalyze his growth and to get to a place where he can actually actualize his potential. And in fact, Abraham Maslow and others say that if you want to actualize your potential, the most actualized among us have experienced trauma, have experienced adversity. The question is, what do we do when we experience it? Can we alchemize it into something positive? Or do we just fall down and not Want to get out of bed. There's post traumatic stress. There's also post traumatic growth. We want to orient toward that, which is a lot of what this work is all about, is learning how to take our challenges, eat that stress like an energy bar, right? And as Nassim Taleb says, be antifragile. The wind will extinguish a candle, but it fuels a fire. So when we have challenging times in our lives, we want to really allow that to make us stronger. So, anyway, after being fired by the New England Patriots, Coach Carroll is reading John Wooden. He starts the book by describing how he slammed the book shut. He slammed the book shut as he was reading about Coach Wooden. And he had an epiphany. He realized that John Wooden. When we think of John Wooden, we think of the fact that in a 12 year span of time, he won 10 national championships. If you go to Wikipedia and you read the first line or two of his bio, that's what it says. Won 10 national championships in 12 years at UCLA. Go Bruins. But no one says that. It took him basically in his 16th year is when he won his first title. He was a coach at UCLA for 16 years when he won his first championship. And he was a coach in Indiana, a head coach, I think, for Indiana State for two years before that. So he had coached for 17 years before he won his first national championship. But once he won, he was almost unbeatable. He basically, as Pete describes it, he could win forever. And how did he do that? It was because he figured out his philosophy. Coach Wooden had an extraordinarily clear sense of what it took to win, who he was going to be day in and day out, making each day a masterpiece. Perfect practices, fundamentals, etc. Mapped it out in his little pyramid and just crushed it. But it took him that long to get to that point. So Pete realized, wow, this is what's been missing. Got fired five times. I couldn't explain my vision well enough to the ownership, so they understood what I was doing and bought in for the long term. I didn't understand it well enough, he said. And he committed right then to create his philosophy so that he could win forever. That's the origin of the phrase and that's the inspiration for the philosophy that he developed. Really, really inspiring stuff. So think about that. Wherever you are in your life. The setbacks are just stepping stones. They're not stumbling blocks. They're stepping stones to your next future. But you need to get clear on what, what your winning philosophy is. What do you do when you're on, how do you systematize that such that that becomes who you are day in and day out? That's what we want to create, is our own winning philosophy. And again, that's what these videos are all about, is to give you little big ideas. Little big ideas, but a lot of little big ideas. And you can architect your own winning philosophy. That's why I always ask you, what's your favorite idea? How do you implement that into your life, Get a coherent philosophy that you live day in and day out. It's the key to success and to winning forever. Now. So what is his philosophy? Well, one of the cores is kind of the heart of it, is always compete. Always compete to win forever. What does that mean, always compete? Well, he says that what he wants to do is to do things better, do things. Better than they've ever been done than ever before. Imagine that. That's your standard. That was his standard. That's what he brought to usc. He said, look, I want to do things better than they've ever been done before. We're going to always compete to do things better than they've ever been done before. The Greeks said the same exact thing. Arete, can you, in this moment, express the highest version of yourself? Always compete to be the best version of yourself, moment to moment to moment? That's the heart of winning forever. Really, really cool idea. He brought this always compete idea into every single practice. One of his chapters and in the book is practice is everything. He has his players go full throttle, always competing with themselves to be the best version they can be and with each other. High pressure, high stress, every single practice, such that when they get to the game, they know they have what it takes. They have this incredible confidence that's grounded in incredible performance day in and day out. Again, we can talk about that for a while. We'll leave it at that for now. Final big idea after you always compete live with Arete such that you can actualize your potential and do things better than they've ever been done before. Be the only one doing what you're doing. So he shares this great story about Jerry Garcia, Grateful Dead. Apparently he was being interviewed and Pete grew up in the Bay Area and he heard this interview when he was young or whenever it was, and he was blown away. So Jerry Garcia is asked by a radio show talk guy or whatever, wow, Jerry, how's it feel to be arguably the best band, the best musicians ever? How does that feel? Jerry Garcia, in his laid back way, said, no, man, that's Never what we tried to do, we never tried to be the best. We were committed to being the only ones who did what we did. The only ones. Now that's how we want to approach things. When you think about actualizing your potential, you don't do that by trying to be like somebody else. Sure, you can model certain things that inspire you, but at the end of the day, you need to express yourself in the most full extent possible to create the context in which you can be used. So don't try to be the best at something. Try to be the only one who's doing a certain thing or doing whatever it is that you do. Go into that heart of who you are. Deep self awareness. Always compete, do your best. Moment to moment to moment. Try to do things the best you've ever done them before. Some of my mentors that just love how they use every moment, they're driving in their renewable energy car, right? Sitting there in their Prius or whatever it is and they're driving, they see, can I get better gas mileage this trip than I did before? It's amazing little things. Can you be more efficient in how you go about your day to day activities? Those little wins add up when you show up at competition time. Always compete. Remember a certain level of being stressed. Adversarial growth is important. We need it in order to reach our potential. So when you get your butt kicked, whether it's being fired once or twice or three times, or four times or five times, or experiencing whatever failures you have in your life, use it as a catalyst to your greatest potential and realize it's necessary for your ultimate growth. It's not fun, but it's necessary. A winning philosophy is what we need if we want to win forever. What is yours? What's your winning philosophy? How do you embrace that more, live from that place, that clarity and then Coach Maslow. Ultimately, what one can be, one must be. What one can be, one must be. This need to self actualize isn't a oh, that'd be nice if it happened. It's a fundamental need. As we move up this hierarchy, we need to actualize. It's as real as our need for oxygen. So imagine if you're feeling despair or depression or whatever, that's your soul and gasping for oxygen. It's a good thing that you're feeling this because it's a wake up call to figure out your philosophy and what you're going to do, the habits you're going to engage in such that you can actualize your potential. There you go quick look at this great book. Super inspiring. Win forever. If you're into sports, I think I know you'll love it even if you're not. It's a good book, but there you go. Hope you enjoyed. What was the one idea that landed that resonated with you the most? It was just a reminder of what you already knew. How do you go out and apply that more consistently? Get on that. Have another awesome day. Look forward to sharing more with you soon. See ya.