Steve the Owl's Blog

To thine own self be true.- William Shakespeare, Hamlet (as spoken by Polonius)

I have been thinking a lot about the nature of success and personal development for some time now. I even started a Facebook group devoted to this very purpose. What I think is interesting about the world of personal development is the way that there are so many different strains of thought that work for so many people. For example, I tend to like work in the Jim Rohn/Slight Edge/Seven Habits mold, while others tend to like more Law of Attraction stuff, and still others like their focus on writers like Napoleon Hill. (There are some things in each that I find valuable; hence, my weekly series on Think and Grow Rich.) This got me thinking about people who have succeeded despite going against what most people would say is the most effective way of doing things.

Rex Ryan

My favorite professional football team is the New York Jets, and its current head coach is Rex Ryan, the son of famed coach and defensive genius Buddy Ryan (who, interestingly, was an assistant for Weeb Ewbank the year the Jets won their only Super Bowl). Ryan is also a great defensive coach whose ball-control style offense brings back memories of an older style of pro football that uses a great ground game and a great defense to wear down opponents. For example, in the Wild Card Round of the playoffs against the Colts, the Jets carried the ball 38 times compared to 31 pass attempts for Mark Sanchez. For comparison, in that same game, the Colts ran the ball 27 times and Peyton Manning threw 26 pass attempts, far off his average per game in the regular season of 42.

However, what most people know about Rex Ryan is that, he has, in the words of Ralph Kramden, “a biiiiiig mouth!” In the Wild Card Round against the Colts, Ryan (who was 1-5 as a coordinator or coach against the Colts, and that one win came when Manning was pulled in a close game) insisted that he really wanted to win because of how important it was to beat the Colts and, more specifically, Peyton Manning. Against arch-rivals the New England Patriots in the Divisional Round, he said that the game was personal between himself and Patriots coach Bill Belichick. While more traditionally-minded pundits insisted that Ryan was putting a target on his back, he motivated his team, especially his defense, and they changed strategies and confused two of the greatest quarterbacks of this era, winning both games despite being huge underdogs.

Then, against the Pittsburgh Steelers, Ryan was more subdued, and he didn’t trash-talk in the week leading up to the game. As a Jets fan (especially one who has a lot of friends who are Steelers fans), I was shocked as I watched the Steelers jump out to a 24-0 lead, where they seemed to move at will against the third-best defense in the league, and completely shut down the Jets offense. What was so shocking was the way the Jets seemed so off. Eventually, they staged a huge comeback, but it fell short and the Steelers won 24-19.

I couldn’t help but think of what would have happened if Ryan would’ve been as outspoken as he was in the previous two weeks.

Franz Kafka

One of my favorite authors of all time is Franz Kafka, the early 20th-century German-speaking Jewish writer living in Prague (a combination making him the ultimate outsider) who worked days as a clerk and stayed up all night writing about things that some people described as a nightmare, but something that he thought was so funny that he often busted into laughter while reading his stories to his friends.

This is something that most people advise against. “Get eight hours of sleep” is the advice that we all hear. If you want to have energy, you have to get rest. However, Kafka did not. He never became a household name in his lifetime, and he only published a few short stories, but his friend Max Brod defied his wishes and published his writing rather than burning it as Kafka wished on the grounds that he told Kafka that he could never do such a thing, so he should never ask him to do so. When he did this, he unearthed three unfinished novels (Amerika, The Trial, and The Castle) that are considered some of the greatest writing of the 20th century. I wonder if he would have written such incisive work that describe the unease of the human condition in modern society if he got his sleep and did his dreams there rather than the page.

Their Strengths

What drove these two men to greatness was the fact that they were willing to do things differently. Ironically, I think that most people would probably be ill-served by patterning themselves after Rex Ryan or Franz Kafka in terms of actual activity, but they knew what worked for them. Ryan knew how to motivate his players and help keep pressure off of them before big games, and Kafka knew that staying up all night and writing gave him pleasure and satisfaction. In this way, I think that they are great role models as you seek success in your business and in life.

What unconventional activities have helped you break new ground?

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Tags: attitude, different, focus, Franz Kafka, insomnia, Rex Ryan

This entry was posted on Thursday, April 7th, 2011 at 1:28 am and is filed under Personal Development. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.