I played basketball in high school and had a five-minute career in college. My college coach assessed my basketball skills explaining the brevity of my college career. “Greg, you are not quite tall enough; you are a little slow, and your ability to jump high is limited. Despite those small deficiencies, you are an outstanding basketball player!” I am sure I have never had a better-backhanded compliment.
Coach Dollar did say I was an excellent shooter. When my playing career ended, I started coaching basketball for youth leagues.
Coaching was not dependent on height, speed, or jumping ability. I could shoot and I was a good teacher. It is one of my gifts and passions.
I coached Jason’s youth league team, and one day at practice the boys ran to me in a rush, “Coach, will you teach us to shoot three-pointers?” I agreed to teach them, under one condition; they must do exactly what I told them. If they did not follow my instructions, they would be eliminated from learning to shot three-pointers.
The next day, I blew the whistle to start practice. “OK, boys, grab a basketball and get on the court; we are going to learn to shoot three-pointers today!” The gym sounded like a heard of elephants had stampeded in as they grabbed the balls and ran behind the three-point line, ready to shoot.
I stood under the basket, blew the whistle, and called all of the boys to line directly in front of the basket. Looking puzzled, they walked to the basket complaining and confused. “We have to stand behind the three-point line to shot three-pointers, coach. Why are we standing under the basket?”
I placed each player two feet in front of the basket, squared their shoulders to the front of the rim, taught them the proper position for their hands and how to release the ball. I made each player shoot fifty shots and make 35 before they could take two-steps back and repeat the process. I repeated the process every day at the beginning of practice.
By the fifth day of practice nine of the twelve boys quit working on shooting three-pointers. They just went to the three-point line and threw the balls hoping they would go through the basket. They practiced a lot and had experience shooting three-pointers. They rarely achieved their goal of making three-pointers.
I had three players continue the drills. By the time the three players made it to the free-throw line practicing the drill, they already knew how to shoot three-pointers because they knew how to shoot. In fact, because they knew how to shoot, they could shoot from anywhere on the court and make shots.
The three who continued to practice the drills didn’t learn how to shoot three-pointers, they learned to shoot the basketball from anywhere. They learned something even more important than three-pointers–the principle of indirection.
Indirection is the principle for learning to shoot a basketball, learning to play a Beethoven Sonata, golf, a language, or learning to thrive and find fulfillment in life. It is the critical building block that accelerates or stops permanent change.
We see the principle of indirection at work when we achieve goals and objectives, and we see it missing when we fail.
How do we learn the principle of indirection? Indirection is learned through disciplines. Indirection means you do one thing by doing another. Trying harder fails because it tries to do the one thing without doing the other. This principle applies to every area of learning and life.
Let me illustrate. You are just beginning to play the piano. You hear the beautiful Piano Sonata in C minor composed by Beethoven. You are so moved by the music you secure the sheet music and sit down at the piano and try to play the beautiful but very challenging Sonata. Without success, you continue to try harder to play the Sonata until you give up playing the Sonata and lose interest in playing the piano.
Fortunately, you have a friend who is a master pianist and knows the principle of indirection. She says to you, “I can teach you to play Beethoven’s Sonata in C minor, but you must learn the music exactly as I teach it.”
With renewed interest and enthusiasm, you sit down at the piano ready to learn. Your teacher instructs you to play musical scales every day in every musical key over and over again. You play the scales until you can play them all without looking at the sheet music.
Your teacher places the sheet music for Beethoven’s Sonata in C minor before you, and as you begin to your surprise, the beauty of the music and the joy of playing the Sonata delights you. You discover that not only can you play Beethoven’s Piano Sonata in C minor, but also his Sonata in E major and his Concerto in E-Flat major! You have mastered the principle of indirection-you do one thing (play Beethoven) by doing another (learning scales).
We focus our attention on the action, and the result is failure. When we focus on the vision with intention, the action will follow.
Take a few minutes to reflect on your vision. An idea is a thought. A vision is more than a dream or a goal; it is a path to action. Write your vision out and began to commit it to memory if you haven’t already.
