A figure posed with head resting on hand with a headache caused by loud talkers around him
5 writing lessons
Pete Carroll as a Coach of writers or supplier of 5 writing lessons is not well known. For good reason because football coaches don’t teach others how to write, they teach others how to play football. And yet Carroll’s coaching philosophy, one which landed him and the Seattle Seahawks into two successive Super Bowls, is directly applicable to writers and probably to almost all other endeavors. Carroll’s philosophy and his route to its development was fraught with mistakes, failures and disappointment. Exactly the trajectory of any writing career- any career, in truth.
Finally, today, I read an article called The Game Changer , published in Mindful last December. The delay in the read was not due to lack of interest, merely the need to meet my deadline for completing my next book. Now that the manuscript is done, awaiting editorial suggestions, I can take time off to read and write about topics totally unrelated to the book.
At least that’s what I expected when I read this article. Perhaps because my brain attempts to synthesize everything into one neat package, I found Carroll’s experience and the way he expresses it to be wholly relevant to the craft of being a writer.
Here are the five lessons I learned, some relearned while reading this intriguing piece.
One of the many reasons I enjoy sports and reading about the leaders in sports is the very clear reminder that it’s all the same. Whether our field is athletics, the classroom or the stock market, the principles are the same. In the end, our lives and our happiness are directly proportional to our thoughts. What we think, what we permit to reside in our psyches. When our focus is on those who have ‘made it’, or mimicking the experts, we are just wasting our time, precious time.