A great deal of intelligence can be invested in ignorance when the need for illusion is deep. – Saul Bellow, author and winner of the Nobel Prize in Literature

The story is often told that the Blackfeet Indian tribe discovered ingenious ways to hunt, but none more interesting than when hunting buffalo. The tribe devised a way to manipulate the single mindedness of the herd to drive them into a pis’kun. Simply put the medicine man would wear a buffalo headdress and the members of the tribe would form a V as they hid behind rocks and bushes. After attracting the attention of the herd, the medicine man would begin to move down the chute continuing to arouse the curiosity of the buffalo until the herd would begin to run. At this point, all the hidden tribe members would jump from their concealed sites and frighten the herd further into the chute. Unfortunately for the buffalo at the end of the corral was the pis’kun, a large precipice loaded with jagged rocks. Stampeding forward with their heads down, the buffalo developed a single minded reliance based on social proof, foolishly propelling themselves towards their untimely end. What’s even more amazing is the fact that the corrals were often made of materials that the buffalo could have easily decimated with their collective strength but never did.

In more recent history, you may have seen the terrifying video of a man being hit by a speeding car in Hartford CT. Caught on video it appears that nobody is willing to actually run to the man’s aid. The next day the national news media decried the woes of our callous society…how could this happen? Have we become that detached from each other? The fact is that this has nothing to do with today’s society, rather everything to do with human behavior given a set of circumstances. Because we like to look poised and in control, avoiding embarrassment at all costs, we will tend to look for social proof when we are confronted with a situation that is unfamiliar. Given that proof, we might even conclude to take the inappropriate action…thus the explanation of bystander inaction during a crisis.

Hunger is insolent and will be fed. – Homer (Greek poet, author of the Iliad and the Odyssey, 9-8th Century BC)

One night after delivering a sales tele-coaching session, one of my students told me that he had mentioned to his team while listening to the call that I was very aggressive in my approach, a comment to which one of his team members replied, “no, he’s Hungry.” I was thrilled with the description because if there was ever anything I want to be known as it’s hungry…in other words, never satisfied and always searching for more or the next level in whatever I’m involved with. To be like that has often times left me in a lonely place in a world where acceptance of average or mediocre seems to be the norm. What some people have described as success, I have only seen as a simple step forward…do you really believe that even if you were to achieve great success like a sport’s championship, graduating with high honors, growing and selling a company for multi-millions, having a bunch of healthy children or grandchildren, that it just ends there at the pinnacle? Of course not, there is always MORE!

There’s a difference between interest and commitment. When you’re interested in something, you do it only when circumstances permit. When you’re committed to something, you accept no excuses, only results. – Author Unknown

This week I had the special privilege of meeting a Hollywood celebrity, Mark Wahlberg. A Boston native, Wahlberg was in town for the local premier of his new movie The Happening. I was introduced during a charity event and had the opportunity to see him interact with the crowd. The opportunity allowed me to reflect on how few people actually make it very far in the pursuit of an acting career, yet here was a guy who has achieved remarkable success at a relatively young age, which begs the question…How? I could not help but come to one conclusion: commitment. I don’t know enough about Wahlberg to know at what point he decided to dedicate his efforts to becoming a successful actor, but I do realize that he had to be 100% committed to his success and most likely took a no prisoners attitude towards achieving that goal and kicked down many a door, obstacle or detour on his way to success until he had achieved it. Clearly, you must have some level of ability within whichever arena you choose to compete in life, but like famed coach Vince Lombardi said: “the quality of a person’s life is in direct proportion to their commitment to excellence, regardless of their chosen field of endeavor.”

It is better to lead from behind and to put others in front especially when you celebrate victory when nice things occur. – Nelson Mandela

As I write this the Boston Celtics are in the midst of the greatest turnaround in NBA history playing in the championship against their greatest rival the Los Angeles Lakers…(even if you don’t have the slightest interest in basketball, stay with me because this is a winner). What intrigues me is not the event itself rather the “how”…which was finally revealed by a closer look at the Celtics coach Doc Rivers. At the beginning of the year the team had the great blessing of being able to acquire the services of two fantastic players, Kevin Garnett and Ray Allen, this in addition to a current long time Celtic, Paul Pierce; from that point forward they would become known as the Big Three! However, history has proven many times over that a mere gathering of excellent talent does not guarantee a championship team by default. Why? Simple. The inability of great individual performers to invoke humility and put the team first! Enter Doc Rivers stage left…he gathered his super individuals around an African tribal concept called Ubuntu. Albeit tough to define exactly, its true essence is “I am because we are.” And guess what…it worked! Regardless of the final outcome, the Big Three have shown that putting the team first can result in much greater achievement. This concept is not foreign to any of us and is echoed today by some of the greatest motivators of our time like Zig Ziglar whose mantra is, “You will get all you want in life if you help enough people get what they want.” Or the discussion with my father in law who reminisced how during World War II families would search the neighborhood for scrap metals to put forward not for profit rather for the good of the cause! Nelson Mandela describes Ubuntu like this: “A traveler through a country would stop at a village and he didn’t have to ask for food and water. Once he stops, the people give him food, they entertain him…Ubuntu does not mean that people should not address themselves. The question therefore is: are you going to do so in order to enable the community around you to be able to improve?”

By failing to prepare, we are preparing to fail. – Benjamin Franklin

The point has certainly been made that many of us do not have any idea what it is that we really want and how important it is to sit still and write down some clear goals. However, once that exercise has been completed, the next challenge is do we really have the courage to properly prepare and to take advantage of opportunity when it arises! Many dwellers of the “sideline” of life tend to marvel at the accomplishments of overachievers, but are they really any different from you? Consider Tiger Woods…sure he has some natural ability to swing a golf club, but his preparation for success is very well documented. Images of Tiger playing golf as a child with his father are incessant. His physical workouts are also well documented and obvious from his appearance versus the majority of his competition. Read any golf digest and you will find how he is usually one of the first to arrive at the range and one of the last to leave. Yet you’ll still sit there on your couch and call him a golf genius, a phenom! Why not give credit to his incredible preparedness, his tireless pursuit of improvement!! I’ll argue you don’t because that might make you actually look in the mirror and come face to face with our own reality…you don’t really want to do what it takes to get what you really want. I’m not trying to beat you up, rather I want you to realize that you can achieve at a much greater level than you are at this very moment.