VALENTINE’S DAY WISDOM
FROM VINCE LOMBARDI
It’s Valentine’s Day. (As if you need to be reminded.)
So let’s talk about Vince Lombardi.
Huh?
Yes, that Vince Lombardi.
The National Football League's Super Bowl trophy is named in his honor. And yes, the Green Bay Packers just won the Super Bowl and he’s probably best known as the head coach of the Packers during the 1960s. And yes, you’ll pay premium prices to see the play Lombardi on Broadway this season. Or perhaps you saw the recent HBO movie about his life. Or you’re counting on Robert De Niro playing Lombardi in an upcoming big screen project.
Or maybe, having pulled into the rest stop named for him on the NJ Turnpike near the Giants/Jets Meadowlands Stadium you, like me, claim a New Jersey connection.
But what’s that got to do with Valentine’s Day?
Bear with me.
About that Jersey connection: As you may have noted, the offices of Alexander Publishing (modestly referred to here as “World Headquarters”) are located in Englewood NJ.
From our conference room windows we can gaze across our little Depot Square Park, over the tracks and past the repurposed sort of Victorian-looking railroad station, at the spires of St. Cecilia Catholic Church which, for years, also offered the community a parochial high school.
The coaching legend began there. In 1939, Vince Lombardi accepted his first football-related job as an assistant coach at St. Cecilia’s.
At age 26, Lombardi also taught Latin, chemistry, and physics for an annual salary of under $1700. And, the local story goes, as a bachelor he shared a boarding house room across the street from the school with the St. Cecilia’s head coach at the time, his old college football teammate from Fordham, Andy Palau.
So, although I’m only a moderately enthusiastic or knowledgeable fan of professional football –
I’m a Vince Lombardi Fan by geographic proxy.
And also – being in the thick of the self-improvement, motivation, inspiration business – I can spout any number of bits of –
Legendary Lombardi Wisdom
You probably can, too --
- “Winning isn't everything, it's the only thing.”
- “Winning isn't everything, but the will to win is everything.”
- “Winning is not a sometime thing; it's an all time thing. You don't win once in a while, you don't do things right once in a while, you do them right all the time.”
- “Winners never quit and quitters never win.”
- “If it doesn't matter who wins or loses, then why do they keep score?”
- “Show me a good loser, and I'll show you a loser.”
- “If you can accept losing, you can't win.”
- “We didn't lose the game; we just ran out of time.”
- “It's not whether you get knocked down, it's whether you get up”
- “The only place success comes before work is in the dictionary.”
- “If you aren't fired with enthusiasm, you will be fired with enthusiasm.”
Whew! Tough talk, right?
And while the fire-up-the-team locker room mentality might be effectively applied to certain Valentine’s Day type relationships, it’s not very romantic, is it?
But there’s a Lombardi quote I find surprisingly appropriate to the day.
Lombardi also said: “Mental toughness is humility, simplicity, spartanism, and one other … love. I don’t necessarily have to like my associates but as a man, I must love them.”
And he continued –
“Love is loyalty; love is teamwork.
Love respects the dignity of the individual.
Heart and power is the strength of your cooperation.”
Interesting, right? A statement about love, obviously rooted in the man’s football coaching fundamentals, and indicative of the kind of devotion he inspired and how he made that happen.
Kinda tough love. No pink cherubs … or heart-shaped boxes of candy … or expensive flowers … or lovey-dovey poetic sentiments per se.
TGIM VALENTINE’S DAY TAKEAWAY: In this season of over-commercialized sentimentality about an ethereal ideal of love, isn’t it a pleasant surprise to find a simply stated universal standard that we might all be well advised to live by. If we worked at our relationships with the single-mindedness that Lombardi brought to his devotion to football, perhaps we, like Lombardi, would never suffer a “losing season.”
One final note about Lombardi’s personal relationships: While they were preoccupied with football, and his family life in particular had exceedingly stormy passages, he lived his “love is loyalty” philosophy. Vince Lombardi is buried next Marie, his wife since his St. Cecilia coaching days, in Mount Olivet Cemetery in Middletown Township, New Jersey.
That’s my gift for Valentine’s Day to all the folks I have loving feelings for – including you.
Geoff Steck
Chief Catalyst
Alexander Publishing & Marketing
Chief Catalyst
Alexander Publishing & Marketing
8 Depot Square
P.S. “When I speak of love, I am speaking of the force which all the great religions have seen as the supreme unifying principle of life. Love is the key that unlocks the door which leads to ultimate reality.” Martin Luther King, Jr. (1929 – 1968) said that.
GEOFF STECK leads Alexander Publishing & Marketing, a company he formed in 1986. The core AP&M mission: To create and publish leadership, sales mastery, self-improvement and workplace skill-building resources and tools. The focus: Areas such as business communication, staff support, customer care and frontline management. Geoff also puts his corporate and entrepreneurial experience, independent perspective, and skills as a catalyst to work for other firms (ranging from multinational corporations to more modest operations), not-for-profits, and individuals who have conceived or developed programs or initiatives but are frustrated in getting them implemented.
No comments:
Post a Comment