How to Be Like Mike by Pat Williams Read Free Book Online

first.
3. Your dream does not always require the approval of someone you love.
4. Your dream can start with whatever is in your heart today.
5. You already have what it takes to launch an uncommon dream—DESIRE.
6. Your dream will require a true hunger for attainment.
7. Your dream must become your magnificent obsession.
8. Your dream must be energizing enough to cause you to make a change in your daily routine.
9. An uncommon dream will require immediate attention.
10. Your dream deserves your total focus.
11. Your dream may require a geographical change.
12. Your dream will always require the assistance of others.
13. Your dream may require extraordinary negotiations with others.
14. You must always build your daily agenda around your dream.
15. You must nurture and protect those relationships connected to your dream.
    Nowread this list again. Pause after each one, and think of Michael Jordan, of what we’ve discussed, of what we know about this man, of the encouragement he received, of the desire he emanated, of the“magnificent obsession,” of the “total focus.” It all seems to fit, doesn’t it?
    I don’t design clothes. I design dreams.
    —Ralph Lauren
    It’s a dream, after all, that blesses us with the focus to block out everything else. It’s the realization of a dream that affords us true bliss, as basketball did for Michael Jordan.
    And what keeps those dreams in the box? What produces such self-consciousness?
    Often, it’s merely a realization. It’s the understanding that we can’t control the path of our dreams, that sometimes they become derailed by events or actions that we cannot affect. This devastates us. This forces us back into the box. And this destroys the whole process. And in the end, it might destroy us.
    One of my favorite writers, the late Erma Bombeck, observed: “There are people who put their dreams in a little box and say, ‘Yes, I’ve got dreams, of course I’ve got dreams. ’ Then they put the box away and bring it out once in a while to look at it, and yep, they’re still there. These are great dreams, but they never even get out of the box. It takes an uncommon amount of guts to put your dreams on the line, to hold them up and say, ‘How good am I or how bad am I?’”
    If you have a dream, don’t let anything dim it.
    —Christa McAuliffe
TEACHER/ASTRONAUT
    It’s out of Your Hands
I play the game over in my mind and get out of it what I can. I’ll think about it for a while, then let it go. I’m strong enough mentally to put it away.
    —Michael Jordan
    T here are times when it’s not our fault, times when we’ve done everything to prepare for the moment, to enjoy the flush of success, and we fall short. Every shot Jordan took had such immense preparation behind it. And yet his career field-goal percentage was barely above fifty percent. Which means he failed half the time, sometimes even in weighty moments, late in the game or deep in the postseason.
    But there was always a next time. And he had the fortitude to shake off the daunting notion of failure, to take the same shot again, to recognize that our destiny is not always under our own power.
    In sports, in business, in life, we have a tendency to blame ourselves when something goes wrong. We assume we control everything about our professional lives, and we become mired in self-doubt. And while we flounder, our dreams continue to tiptoe above our grasp.
    Remember what you can’t control: death, undeserved criticism, a job transfer, illness. And remember what you can control: your time, your effort, your thoughts, your tongue, your attitude, your choice of friends, your commitments, your response to failure.
    You can always count on baseball players for pithy philosophies, if nothing else. Here, then, in that great Yogi Berra tradition, is former outfielder Mickey Rivers:
    “Don’t worry about things you have no control over, because you have no control over them,” he says. “Don’t worry about the