Reddit reviews Wooden on Leadership: How to Create a Winning Organization
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McGraw-Hill
I think mindfulness is an open awareness of everything including the state of your own mind. The goal isn't to stop your mind from wandering, that's not possible. The goal is to notice when it does, and then, if you choose to, redirect your attention back on the present moment.
People hear this and they go "Yeah I get it, but isn't the REAL goal to stop your mind from wandering? Because that's what I want." Ultimately if you are mindful it is extremely likely you will spend less hours of the day with a wandering mind. But that wasn't the goal, that's a side effect.
In "complex adaptive systems", like people, you generally do not want your goal to be the thing you want to achieve. This isn't an opinion it's like a solid theorem or something, I can't remember where I read it though, but it's like a math thing, it's just how things work.
If a coach told the team their goal was to "score more points than the other team" how good of a coach would that be? Obviously they want to score more points, but that cannot be their *goal*. Their goal should be something like "move the ball up the field" or "maintain possession" or "keep it on the outside" or "get the ball to the Italians".
The greatest college basketball coach of all time John Wooden famously said that winning was NEVER his goal and it should should never be the player's goal. The goal was to play your absolute best. If you played your best and lost, that is great you succeeded. If you didn't play your best and won, then you failed, zero celebration for that, you were chewed out for that, you got extra conditioning for that.
How did this "not trying to win" philosophy work out? "In Wooden’s 27 years as the Bruins’ head coach, his teams won an unprecedented 10 national championships, including seven straight at one point in the late 1960s and early 1970s. The next closest coaches in terms of titles won? That would be Mike Krzyzewski and Adolph Rupp with a meager four each." [1]
Wooden always famously started new players off by teaching them to lace up their shoes. He drilled into them principles like enthusiasm, team spirit, initiative, loyalty, self-control. He had a strict no profanities policy: that was a demonstration you didn't have self-control and lack of self-control would lead to fouls which could decide games. However the goal wasn't "commit less fouls" it was "don't use profanity on the court". All these things resulted in winning games without ever adopting "win games" as a goal. [2]
You have to embrace "learn to notice when your mind wanders and redirect yourself back to the present moment" as the goal. If you do that 1,000 times a day that's great. That's 1000x better than not noticing your mind wandered. And you have to work on it. Most likely for your whole life. Meditation is something where the people who have done it for 40,000 hours, essentially all day every day, still feel it's worthwhile to do more of it. And mindfulness is something you can practice even when not meditating.
I do think you can notice changes in weeks or months, but it might be years before it feels "life changing". However your mileage may vary, might go better or worse than that for you.
[1] - https://bleacherreport.com/articles/1341064-10-greatest-coaches-in-ncaa-basketball-history#slide10
[2] - https://www.thewoodeneffect.com/pyramid-of-success/
See also: https://www.amazon.com/Wooden-Leadership-Create-Winning-Organization/dp/0071453393
I'm sure there are a bunch of people that would be willing to do their best at answering whatever questions you have on here. Obviously, coaching is complex and there are rarely easy or obvious answers.
As for books, the books that I'd recommend these days:
[The Art of Learning] (http://www.amazon.com/The-Art-Learning-Journey-Performance/dp/0743277465)
[The Inner Game of Tennis] (http://www.amazon.com/dp/0679778314/?tag=googhydr-20&hvadid=40113434767&hvpos=1t1&hvexid=&hvnetw=g&hvrand=4260322089310012087&hvpone=&hvptwo=&hvqmt=b&hvdev=c&ref=pd_sl_8mdnpg1nf9_b)
[10 Minute Mental Toughness] (http://www.amazon.com/10-Minute-Toughness-Training-Program-Winning/dp/0071600639/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1426395408&sr=1-1&keywords=10+minute+mental+toughness)
[Wooden on Leadership] (http://www.amazon.com/Wooden-Leadership-Create-Winning-Organization/dp/0071453393/ref=sr_1_3?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1426395634&sr=1-3&keywords=john+wooden)