From Yoga Practice to Funding Practice
Tom Suddes | December 18, 2007
Three things hit me in
the last 24 hours around this one word of ‘PRACTICE’.
- MY YOGA
‘PRACTICE’. At the end of class last night, we were
reminded to keep up our ‘PRACTICE’ during the holidays.To ‘PRACTICE’ yoga means that you never really
stop… it never ends… it’s a lifelong ‘PRACTICE’…a literal journey.
Same thing is true when you ‘PRACTICE’
medicine or law or accounting.More importantly, we need to
make ‘LIFE’ our ‘PRACTICE’. - NOTRE DAME
BOXING. In a conversation with this year’s captain, we
were talking about the schedule for our six weeks of training
beginning January 15th. It really is about the
‘PRACTICE’ (training)… not about the fights
themselves.As I remind all of the participants (225 guys and
100 young ladies), this is a sport that you really, really need to
enjoy/love the TRAINING (PRACTICE).At the very most,
assuming you win all of your fights (the prelim, the quarters, semis
and the finals), you will have fought for 19 minutes! Think
about it. Over half of these boxers will ‘lose’ in
their first bout, which means they will have actually fought for
real in the ring for a total of 3 rounds or 3 minutes and 45
seconds!!! (Many of them won’t even make it to the third
round.)In sports,
there is this wonderful idea of enjoying the ‘PRACTICE’(TRAINING). In fact, the better the athlete, the better the team,
the more enjoyable the PRACTICE.How can we apply this to our
lives? To our careers? - ‘PRACTICE’ vs. ‘PLAY FOR REAL’.
In our third training session with Ohio’s College Access
Network, we challenged the College Access Programs to go out and
make VISITS and JUST ASK. One wonderful young lady who is Executive
Director at a program shared a story of how she went out and made
her first three visits… and viewed them as “JUST
PRACTICE”. She didn’t even call on her ‘best
prospects’, but rather on people who have no association or
relationship with her program.She got one $10,000
commitment and two $5,000 commitments!!!
She is a
very talented ‘program’ person who runs a strong
organization. But, as she says, she didn’t have any
fundraising experience’ and didn’t really want
any. The idea of going out to “PRACTICE” made all the
difference in the world for her.
My closing thought is
that a ‘PRACTICE MENTALITY’ provides a “nothing
to lose”… “it’s just practice”…
“there’s no pressure” attitude.
We
should all operate like this in ’08.
-
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