Raising an Athlete with Million-Dollar Dreams and Five-Dollar Habits
Being a sports parent is fun. However, it can be rather frustrating if your child has dreams to play in college, go to the Olympics, or go pro but doesn’t show the work ethic to back this up. I call this having million-dollar dreams with five-dollar habits.
As a parent, you can’t help but to think if this kid would listen to you just 10% of the time the world would be their oyster. Instead, it seems they would rather just drive you nuts with their big dreams and bad habits.
With that said, today I came across the perfect quote for parents in situations like this. It’s a quote from hall of fame football coach Tom Landry.
Leadership is getting someone to do what they don’t want to do, to achieve what they want to achieve.
This quote is a homerun for sports parents. The truth is most young athletes don’t understand the sacrifice it takes to achieve their big dreams. Doing what it takes to be a college, Olympic, or professional athlete is boring. Repetitive drilling, repetitive study of film, and repetitive training of mental skills are a must to go from average, to good, to great.
It’s a fact that doing what it takes to become above average at anything meaningful is not and will never be fun. Yes, reaping rewards when the world recognizes that you are above average is fun. But putting your mind and body through the training to get those rewards is not.
Author Geoff Colvin writes this in so many words in his seminal book Talent is Overrated:
It seems a bit depressing that the most important thing you can do to improve performance is no fun, take consolation in this fact: It must be so. If the activities that lead to greatness were easy and fun, then everyone would do them and they would not distinguish the best from the rest.
This is why those leadership skills that Tom Landry was espousing are so important for parents. You must go into overdrive leading your child to adopt the core values that lead to self-motivation. That is the only way you can get them to do “what they don’t want to do, to achieve what they want to achieve.” These core values include:
- Purpose
- Sacrifice
- Discipline
- Integrity
- Preparation
- Personal Growth
- Work Ethic
- Commitment
- Responsibility
- Quality
Obviously, this is no easy task. So, if you have a child that says they want it, but hasn’t made the decision to do what it takes yet, outside coaching may be a good fit for your family. Please contact me to find out how my coaching program for young athletes can help.