Eleven Rings: The Soul of Success

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As I see it, my job as a coach was to make something meaningful out of one of the most mundane activities on the planet: playing pro basketball. Despite all the glamour surrounding the sport, the process of playing day after day in one city after another can be a soul-numbing exercise. That’s why I started incorporating meditation into practices. I wanted to give players something besides X’s and O’s to focus on. What’s more, we often invented rituals of our own to infuse practices with a sense of the sacred. But Sauron’s hand in the creation of the elven rings means that their power was, at least in part, dependent on Sauron’s existence. This was among the reason that Bilbo’s mere rediscovery of the One Ring was something of a death knell to elves on Middle-earth. Whether Sauron found the ring or the Ring was destroyed, the elven Rings would have been rendered unusable.

Eleven Rings: The Soul of Success - The Rabbit Hole Eleven Rings: The Soul of Success - The Rabbit Hole

That’s the essence of what it means to bring individuals together and connect them to something greater than themselves. I heard that hymn thousands of times when I was growing up, and I witnessed what happens when the spirit touches people and unites them. The rituals had a profound effect on me—and on my approach to leadership—even though later I drifted away from the Pentecostal faith and found a new direction spiritually. And yet as a coach, I know that being fixated on winning (or more likely, not losing) is counterproductive, especially when it causes you to lose control of your emotions. What’s more, obsessing about winning is a loser’s game: The most we can hope for is to create the best possible conditions for success, then let go of the outcome. The ride is a lot more fun that way. Bill Russell, the Boston Celtics great who won more championship rings as a player than anyone else (eleven), revealed in his memoir, Second Wind, that he sometimes secretly rooted for the opposing team during big games because if they were doing well, it meant he would have a more heightened experience.Phil says that it took him years of practice, but eventually the more aware he started to be about what was going on within him, the more he became connected to the world outside. Heider, whose book is based on Lao-tzu's Tao Te Ching, suggests that leaders practice becoming more open. "The wise leader is of service: receptive, yielding, following. The group member's vibration dominates the lead, while the leader follows. But soon it is the member's consciousness which is transformed, the member's vibration which is resolved."

Rings: The Soul of Success by Phil Jackson (Book Summary) 11 Rings: The Soul of Success by Phil Jackson (Book Summary)

By the time most future NBA players are middle schoolers, they become immersed in a universe that reinforces egoistic behavior. As they grow older and continue to succeed, they become surrounded by legions of agents, promoters, groupies, and other sycophants who keep telling them they're "da man". It doesn't take long before they start to really buy into it. Red was a master of simplicity. He didn’t espouse any particular system, nor did he stay up all night inventing plays. What he believed in was playing the game the right way, which to him meant moving the ball on offense and playing intense team defense. Red learned the game in the pre–jump shot era when five-man ball movement was far more prevalent than one-on-one creativity. He had two simple rules, which he shouted from the sidelines during every game: But to my surprise, early in the season I noticed that even some of the most immature players on the team were focused and single-minded. “We were on a serious mission, and there wasn’t going to be any letup,” says forward Luke Walton. “By the time we got to the finals, losing just wasn’t going to be an option.”

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What attracted me to the triangle was the way it empowers the players, offering each one a vital role to play as well as a high level of creativity within a clear, well-defined structure. The key is to train each player to read the defense and react appropriately. This allows the team to move together in a coordinated manner—depending on the action at any given moment. With the triangle you can’t stand around and wait for the Michael Jordans and Kobe Bryants of the world to work their magic. All five players must be fully engaged every second—or the whole system will fail. That stimulates an ongoing process of group problem solving in real time, not just on a coach’s clipboard during time-outs. When the triangle is working right, it’s virtually impossible to stop it because nobody knows what’s going to happen next, not even the players themselves. His coaching style, which utilized Tex Winters’ triangle offense, was deeply influenced by Eastern philosophy and Native American spiritual practices.

Rings of Power’s elven rings do, and who has them by What Rings of Power’s elven rings do, and who has them by

Inspired Dennis Rodman and other 'uncoachable' personalities to devote themselves to something larger than themselves

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At the start of every season I encouraged players to focus on the journey rather than the goal. What matters most is playing the game the right way and having the courage to grow, as human beings as well as basketball players. When you do that, the ring takes care of itself.” The best way of coping with them instead is to become an active participant in them. Instead of only seeking gain and happiness, we must accept losses as well.