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[TobiasK]

BY Ozzie | August 21st, 2009 at 9:26 AM
The Middle Ground
“Winning isn’t everything, it is the only thing”, Coach Vince Lombardi.

According to sport history, one of the winningest coaches in History who regaled the world with popular quotes about winning. This take no prisoners attitude gained him praise and games.

Let’s look at his resume:

Honors

• In 1967, Highland Avenue in Green Bay, home to the Packers' Lambeau Field, was renamed for Lombardi.
• As part of the Lambeau Field renovation, a statue of Lombardi now stands on a plaza outside the stadium, in an overcoat grasping a program, as he did often on the sideline.
• In 1972, the Green Bay School District named its new junior high school (later a middle school) "Vincent T. Lombardi Junior High (Middle) School." It is located on Green Bay's southwest side.
• The football field at Old Bridge High School in Old Bridge, New Jersey, is called "Vince Lombardi Field." It has been called this since the 1970s, the field in Palisades Park is also known as "Vince Lombardi Field." His brother Joe attended the rededication ceremony in the 1990s.
• There is a Vince Lombardi Square (with a plaque dedication in the sidewalk on the square) near Sheepshead Bay Road and East 14th Street in Brooklyn, New York.
• Also in Brooklyn, there are two places in the Bensonhurst area, which are dedicated or rehonored in Vince Lombardi's honor: P.S. 204 on 15th Avenue and 81st Street is unofficially named the Vince Lombardi Public School, and the entire Bensonhurst stretch of 16th Avenue is dedicated by the City of New York as "Vince Lombardi Boulevard."
• The Vince Lombardi Service Area and park-and-ride is the northernmost rest area on the New Jersey Turnpike, at mileposts 116E on the Eastern Spur and 115.5W on the Western Spur. Outside the gift shop is a plaque about his life, which notes that he is buried in Mount Olivet Cemetery, Middletown, New Jersey.
• The Vincent T. Lombardi Council, No. 6552, Knights of Columbus, in Middletown, New Jersey, is named for him.
• The Vince Lombardi Cancer clinic at Aurora BayCare Medical Center in Green Bay is named after him.
• The Vincent T. Lombardi Center at Fordham University was named for the coach.
• The Lombardi Comprehensive Cancer Center at Georgetown University is named in his honor.
• The Rotary Lombardi Award is given annually to the best college football lineman or linebacker.
• In 1969, Lombardi received the Silver Buffalo Award, the highest adult award given by the Boy Scouts of America.
• Immediately following his death in September 1970, the NFL's "World Championship Game Trophy" (first awarded in January 1967) was renamed the Vince Lombardi Trophy. It is given annually to the winner of the Super Bowl.
• Lombardi was enshrined in the NFL's Pro Football Hall of Fame, in Canton, Ohio, at its next induction ceremony in 1971.

Not bad. So far for the good stuff.

Other Coach Lombardi Qualities That Won’t Go Into History Books

He was famous for yelling and publicly embarrassing his players when mistakes were made. Players walked the tight rope when they were around him and some mistakes can be attributed to the high pressure to succeed he put on players.


He also rewarded them profusely in Pavlovian fashion when they won titles.

In his case, the million dollars those players were paid kind of ease the blow of harsh criticism. Business is business. But let’s look at this closely.

The Self Critic

How many of you would like to live with Coach Lombardi? How many would like to share 24 hours of their life with an outcome-dependent success freak. Yeah, I am sure some of the guys who praised him would not talk so highly of him if they were forced to live with him.

However, we would never want to share our lives with this guy but some of us live with a coach Lombardi in our heads. It is called the Self Critic. Every time you make a mistake it whips at you thoughts like “that was stupid”, “you sucked there” even for little things like dropping sugar on the floor of the kitchen. How many times have you told yourself “stupid” in your life time for little things like that, not to mention the big ones?

How many of you would give their kid to coach Lombardi to train even if you wanted him to succeed as a player?

The “Do-Or-Die” Thinking

This is a failure of the mind so as such it must be treated as a mistake in the way you see the world. When you suffer from “Do-or-Die” thinking you view a challenge as having only two distinct categories. Things are seen as black or white, without any shades of colour in between.

“Either I get the girl, or I am a loser”, “Either they like me right away or I get the hell out of there”, “Either I make out in the first 20 minutes of approaching or my night sucks-or I suck”...etc. you get my drift.

As you notice here in those thoughts, they are either/or. But the criteria for success are so narrow that guys are guaranteed to always fail. They are doomed to negative outcomes because the margin for error is so wide-getting the girl or suck-, they will fail hopelessly most of the time. Then Coach Lombardi appears in their heads and starts the public humiliation or self lashing. Those guys don’t survive long in this game because only perfect is good enough.

Others imagine to succeed with good looking women they must be good looking. In their heads “good looking” is Brad Pitt good looking or model types. As you can see not many people are movie star good looking. So the bar for success with women is so high it prevents them from trying. “Why try? They will reject me. I am not Brad Pitt”.

Not until you address this flaw in your thinking process you won’t get rid of your private coach Lombardi.

It doesn’t mean we will become under achievers-that’s what Coach Lombardi will tell you-, but we will be able to tolerate the trial and error necessary to improve our game.

Coach Lombardi Times

I will enumerate the most common times where Coach Lombardi rears its ugly head during your night out.

1. At the beginning of the night: we are not warmed yet and we are more likely to make calibration mistakes, etc.
2. When we lose a girl, after a long interaction and we thought we had her.
3. When the end of the night is coming and we didn’t get anything yet. It is common for guys to try and do at this time what they should have done before. Kind of procrastination.
4. We have a long string of rejection, for example, three bad sets in a row might trigger criticism inside your head.

So next time out, watch for the bad coach yelling at you inside your head and shut his voice down. It is more fun that way.

The Middle Ground

Doing well but not perfectly. Doing it poorly but getting it done. Those are some of things that would help you put some shades of grey in your performance.

Create a mindset where good enough is good enough. Sometimes you don’t create a first good impression on your girls but think you can fix it down the road: you can succeed despite a bad first impression.

When the set seems to be going nowhere this is when I lay back and not panic. I don’t flagellate myself for it and just lean back and re-engage them. This persistence pays dividends down the road. Interactions never go in a straight line. Allow room for temporary setbacks.

Low points, awkward silences, shit tests are all part of human conversations. You must welcome them as natural parts of the game. You might find that the girl that rejected you at the beginning of the night finds you attractive 2 hours later and goes home with you. Even the same girl can change her moods towards you 5 minutes later of being rude to you.

Allow enough middle ground for success in your interactions and you will find yourself happier, and your interactions getting longer. I don’t worry when half of the girls in a group like me and the other half hate me. I know it will balance out somewhere down the line. Some of the pissed off ones want you bad.