Well done Germany! Be careful who you congratulate.

Recently I have been thinking a lot about why we seem to live our lives concentrating on the highlight reel moments and Germany is a great example of this. We watch the try, the goal being scored over and over again. We watch fighter highlight reels way more than we watch their fights. We seem to value the result way more than we value the process? Obviously having a process is hard when you don’t have a goal or a result in mind, in fact its impossible but we must be careful not to put too much focus on the result, as this will inhibit the process without which there will be no results. One of the worst side effects of result-orientated thinking is that it can put individuals at odds with the rest of his team/family and everybody is part of a team/family. Nobody can reach the top of any endeavor without like-minded people around them.

Germany has just shown us what can be achieved when you get a group who play with TEAMWORK. But they will need to be wary that they don’t let people diminish the achievement of the team by focusing solely on the player who scored the goal, forgetting about the amazing cross and vision that set up the goal. In most of the headlines around the world the player who scored will get most of the credit and in turn because of this publicity the dollars that follow. So we will with out knowing have influenced the type of player millions of young children and adults for that matter want to be so therefore we slow the progress and development of the process because everyone is fighting for the same place.

In Jiu-Jitsu we see this in our academies all the time where the Tap is celebrated and talked about, we then wonder why it takes new students years to relax and play, It is our fault because we are weighting the credit that we award incorrectly, this is why Jiu-Jitsu is now and will always be a team sport where everybody who contributes deserves credit for the results of the team.