The Great Gordino Newsletter – Mon 16th Apr 2012

Hi,
I hope all is well with you.

Well, a few events have happened since the last time I wrote, and they events that grab my attention every year…

Yes, they are in the world of sport, and I know there are a good many readers who have no interest in sport at all, but the reason I still think it’s relevant is that the lessons are easily transferred to any area of life, it’s just that they are presented nice and sharply in sport.

Apr 7th saw the 158th Boat Race, between crews from Oxford and Cambridge Universities. First run in 1829, the race takes place over a 4 mile stretch of the Thames.

Races over the years have seen various incidents, but this year’s race was packed, most notably because a protestor swam out in front of the boats and stopped the race.

He claimed he was protesting against elitism, although I’m not quite sure what that means, or what it aims to achieve.

As for the position of the crews at the time, that’s the biggest lesson…

They were half way down the course, neck and neck, rowing a few feet apart, going at full tilt. The boat race has no monetary prize, it’s an amateur event. The crews from both sides put in 7 months of hard work, 6 hours a day, around their studies.

They push themselves to their limits and then beyond them, just to try and get in the crew in the first place. Then on the race day, they pit themselves against opponents who have done the same brutal training for what is a brutal test of human endurance.

It’s a pure form of sport, and both crews toast each other afterwards, win or lose.

It’s that kind of commitment and hard work as an individual to get things achieved as part of a team, which is how you get things done By ruining it, the protestor is going the wrong way about things, because rather than going down the route of effort that the rowers did, he went down the route of disruption.

Long term readers will know that I prefer the ideal of setting a goal and then working towards it. To interrupt a great example of it with a cheap protest seems, well, cheap, doesn’t it?

The same weekend saw the Masters golf tournament in the US. Golf could be called elitist, probably because of the expense to get started, but having said that, there is nothing stopping anyone progressing if they have the talent.

A famous US golfer called John Daly really caught the imagination a few years back, because he was a loudmouth drinker who just whacked the ball as hard as he could.

That’s the image he liked to project, and one the golf establishment feared. However, both sides left the finer parts of his game out of the picture, and he put it all together to win The Open in 1995 at the home of golf, St.Andrews.

The Masters this year was won by Bubba Watson, another golfer ‘of the people’, because he wears his emotions on his sleeve, and is self taught, claiming to have never had a single golf lesson.

In a world which is full of people telling you how to do things, to get to the top of the tree, I.e. winning a Major, by doing it your own way, is something to behold, and if you can’t see the life lesson in that, then you haven’t been paying attention!!

Ok, that’s it for this week, can you think of examples in your life where you could give that extra push like they have to in the Boat Race, or where you can remind yourself of the courage of your convictions and do things your own way like Bubba Watson?

‘Til Next Time,
Health & Happiness,
Gordon
P.S. You can read more ideas like the ones above in my book ‘Transform Your Life in 21 Days!’

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