Sean Glaze uses a treading-water metaphor and a story about a basketball player named Derek to argue that knowing your personal 'why' is what shifts you from self-focused to team-minded. Without it, you'll exhaust yourself without direction.
The summer before my senior year of high school, I worked as a whitewater lifeguard. That's a good job for a 17-year-old guy, you know what I mean? But what I remember most about the interview for that job was the physical test that they had us take. Imagine yourself, 7 AM on a Saturday morning, getting in the cold water of the huge wave pool there at Whitewater. In the physical test, after you had swum across the wave pool with your legs going, the last test they had you take is treading water. So the expectation is, the 8 or 10 of you that are there trying out on lifeguards, you get into the wave pool and you start treading water. You have to stay in your spot, have to keep your head above water, and then they tell you for the next 5 minutes you got to do it with your hands out of the water. Because as a lifeguard, your job is to use your hands to actually save the person that's in the water. So you can imagine that's pretty difficult. I wanted to quit a couple of times, but I didn't. It's a new wildness now. I gotcha. Now I tell you that story because it inspires something that I say to my students every single year at the beginning of any semester when I talk. And I ask them to imagine, just like I want to ask you to imagine, that you were in the middle of an ocean You're treading water. You get even deeper. And as you tread water, you look around, and there's nothing but water as far as you can see. And what I ask the students is the same thing I'm going to ask you. How long could you do it? How long did you tread water? Raise your hand if you last for 5 minutes. I better see more hands than that. Keep your hand up if you can last for a day, for a week, for a semester, for a year. See, we all know what happens when you get tired and worn out, burned out with just treading water and not going anywhere. Eventually, like some of our students, you sink down below sea level. That's the cheesy joke that you're supposed to laugh at. Because as a teacher, I had seen it happen before. When kids don't know why they're there, they're not going to do well. So the single most important day that I ever spent with my kids had nothing to do with a project or assignment. The single most important day I spend with my kids in my classroom is that one when I ask them about treading water. Because the point that I'm making to you is that if all you're doing is treading water, eventually you're going to get tired. You're going to sink down below your sea level. And that's not something that I want to see happen. So the most important thing you can do as a student, as a member of this audience, is to give yourself a why. To identify an island that you can swim toward. Because if all you're doing is getting effort, eventually all that wasted effort, that's what's gonna drown you. You gotta have a why. Now I always end that with this, and I believe it's one of the most important things I've shared with my kids. If you don't know why you're here, You won't get much while you're at it. Now, I'm a basketball coach. I've been a basketball coach for 26 years. As a basketball coach, you have a very similar conversation with your players the first part of the season. Basketball's different. Yes, every team needs a compelling common goal, but in basketball, they aren't just funeral planners. Basketball, you're depending on the team. You expect other people to care about more than just themselves. What I found over the years is not everybody that puts on a uniform has that same mindset. I remember coaching freshman basketball probably 20 years ago, and there was a kid, we'll call him Derek, who never passed the ball. Not because Derek Couldn't pass it to him because Derek liked to shoot. Derek shot the ball a lot. Not because Derek wanted us to win, because Derek wanted Derek to shoot and score. And so I'm reminded of a phrase that you guys have probably heard before. I'm going to ask you to say it with me. There's no I. I. Oh, we can do just a little bit. There's no I, there's we. Oh, it sounds so good. You've heard it for years, and I can tell you, having coached for over 2 decades, I completely disagree. Every athlete I ever coached was first and foremost an individual concerned about him or herself. Every person in this room is first and foremost concerned about him or herself. And the truth is, we only become a team—basketball or business, in any industry—if you've made the individual decision to be a small contributing part of something larger and more significant than yourself. So one day after a practice, when Derek had taken a particularly large number of bad shots. I put Derek aside. Hey, bud, I'm gonna ask you a question. What do you think would be more important, you shooting a lot or us winning a lot? Imagine the expression he makes looking at that shot. He fought for a moment longer than he should have. I guess, many. And it was that shift that he made in his why. It was him choosing a better island to swim toward that changed everything that followed for the rest of our season. Because Derek was a very talented athlete. And for the rest of that season, once he had shifted his why, once he understood why he was there, he became a far better teammate. Because he understood it wasn't about mine. It was about our success as a team. Later on that season, he wasn't just a whole lot better athlete in terms of playing more physically, he actually passed the ball and we won games because he recognized his part. See, the truth is, whether it's basketball or business or the other industry, Once you know why we're here— it will give you a whole lot more and a whole lot better 'why' energy!
