INTRODUCTION

 

Best. Week. Ever.

Those were the three words I kept hearing, on television and during interviews, as well as from fans and friends, even before our University of Louisville basketball team beat Michigan for the NCAA Championship. It’s true, I had an amazing week. Our team made it to the Final Four, and while I was learning via phone call that I’d been elected to the Naismith Memorial Basketball Hall of Fame, my son Richard called to tell me he had been hired at Minnesota, becoming the youngest head coach in the Big Ten Conference. On top of all that, a horse in which I was part owner won the Santa Anita Derby to punch his ticket for the Kentucky Derby.

People were marveling at my good fortune. And I’ll be honest—I was marveling at my good fortune. A lifetime’s worth of blessing, it seemed, was bestowed during one wondrous week. I was incredibly grateful, and it was more than I deserved. After we won the championship game, I was asked repeatedly to reflect on the preceding week, and what it had been like to have the “best week ever.”

Looking back on all of it, the things everyone was talking about were not, in themselves, what truly made it great. In fact, it wasn’t so long ago that the media was reporting I’d had the “worst week ever.” What happened between the worst of times and what wound up as the best of times—and what made our championship run possible in the first place—gets at the heart of this book.

This book is unlike any other I have undertaken. I began writing it the summer before our championship season, and was piecing it together in my mind long before that. While others have been focused on career, basketball, and success, this book began with just one goal. Plain and simple, it began as an instrument to help people through the most difficult times of their lives. There’s no question we live in trying days, just look at a newspaper or watch the nightly news. But most of us don’t have to do that. We can see the evidence in our own lives. We all know about tough times. In this book, I will talk to you about mine.

A remarkable thing happened while this book was being put together. As I was writing about overcoming adversity, the power of focus, dealing with doubt, the importance of humility, prospering through pressure and the other ideas here, my team was putting each of those principles on display. The special young men I was coaching were putting into practice many of the precepts I will share in this book. They, in essence, wrote the conclusion, provided the happy ending. They proved that these principles work.

They are fundamentals that are badly needed today, by all of us. A basketball season on the mountaintop for me does not change the fact that for many people these remain the most challenging, even desperate, of times. And the memory of adversity is never far away in my own life.

We live in an age warped by worry. Whether through foreclosure, stock market difficulties, or downturns in the housing or job markets, people who never thought they would have to deal with the crushing weight of financial uncertainty have found themselves facing that very problem. Bankruptcies are widespread. Others take retirement, and then find themselves struggling to live off the interest of their savings. Many reaching retirement age aren’t sure whether they should stop working. Conservative investments are no longer reliable sources of income. Guarantees are gone. So many people of all ages in many walks of life feel there is nowhere to turn. A 2011 survey by the American Psychological Association listed money as the No. 1 cause of stress in the United States, with the economy at No. 3 and housing costs at No. 7. Economic changes have many worried about the stability of their situation.

We live in a time troubled by tragedy—the Sandy Hook shootings, the Boston Marathon bombing. Places never before associated with violence now exist under a shadow that affects us all. Random violence is on the rise. When terrorists attacked the United States on September 11, 2001, something changed in our national psyche. A sense of security was shattered. For those of us who suffered personal losses that day, life has never been the same, and the ramifications will last forever. My whole perspective on life changed after 9/11 and the death of my brother-in-law, Billy Minardi. I’ve said it many times: Our life as a family, and particularly my wife and I, will never be the same. It has affected us like nothing else. It has changed the way we think, the way we view the past and the future. Even for those who haven’t lost people close to them, such senseless acts take a toll.

We are a society sapped by stress. We sleep too little and eat too much. Every day you see it—people are on edge, angry and frustrated, or depressed and even hopeless. Most of us have an idea how to handle adversity. But stress is a different matter. It is like a poisonous pill that you take in a daily dose. As the stress of life has increased, we have become an increasingly overweight and unhealthy nation. We must immediately focus on stress relief so we don’t suffer its debilitating side effects. Health and health care have become major sources of worry, and one of the most heated subjects of our national debates.

And above all else—because of everything we are facing—we are distracted. Our children cannot pay attention. Our adults are looking for escape.

All of these things will sap you of your energy, rob you of your resilience, and distract you from the focus that can be the lifeline that pulls you through the difficulties and back onto the road to your goals. So many times, whether in public life or on a smaller scale, I have seen people struggle when circumstances have overtaken them. I have experienced it in my own life.

This is not a book about how to avoid difficult times, though many of the chapters here may help you do just that. Instead, this is a book about what to do in the midst of the storm. What to do when the mistakes have been made, when you face the full-court press, when the bills pile up, the job interviews don’t come, the investments tank, or the public embarrassment strikes. It is a book about keeping life together when it seems to be falling apart, whatever the reason, and emerging victorious on the other side.

My goal in writing this book is to share some of my experience in these areas. When I wrote Success Is a Choice in 1998, I received more than a thousand letters from people saying the book had made a difference in their lives. That book was about overachieving. This book is about overcoming. It is a message that is needed today in many areas of life by a wide range of people.

I have been through periods of great personal grief, professional and personal failure and frustration, as well as great prosperity and career accomplishment. At the University of Louisville, I’ve faced adversity from outside circumstance and of my own making, and I’ve experienced the rewards of strong friendships and great success.

As you embark on these pages, consider that the idea for this book was born out of some very difficult experiences, but by the time the project was completed, everyone was saying I’d experienced the “best week ever.” There is hope, and help, in these difficult times. Sometimes, in fact, the strength we must gather to get through the hard times is what drives us up the mountain.

One problem today is that the obstacles seem so overwhelming that we can’t realistically see the better future that could be ours. That’s why I’m sharing my own method, a tool I used to get through some of my most difficult times, and one I have used for the past several years. Essentially, I have kept myself on a one-day contract, every single day. I will explain to you what that means, and why it works, throughout the following pages.

Being honored by the Hall of Fame and standing on the NCAA victory platform watching the “One Shining Moment” video were experiences to treasure. There is truth to all of the media’s “best week ever” statements.

But one of the greatest moments was not amid the falling confetti and cutting nets. When Kevin Ware went down with a broken leg in the regional final against Duke, it was a terrible thing, probably the most painful sports injury I’d ever personally witnessed. But what grew out of it was something beautiful: the way his teammates responded with genuine, unabashed concern and love; the way our captain, Luke Hancock, knelt by his side to pray; the way our trainer, Fred Hina, rushed to him, covered the exposed leg bone with a towel, and went about stabilizing him; the way our equipment manager, Vinny Tatum, and strength coach, Ray Ganong, also rushed to comfort him; and finally, the way Kevin himself found the presence of mind and strength of character in that moment to think not of himself but of the rest of us, to urge us to win the game. Very seldom in life do you see such a profound response to adversity on such a public stage. The courage, love, and toughness embodied in all that were unforgettable. And when I walked into Kevin’s hospital room and the doctors told me he was going to be fine, that was one of the greatest moments. His ability to overcome adversity, to tell all of us, “I’m going to be fine, just win the game,” and the spontaneous emotion and the strength of our players to persevere, were together the biggest victory. The one message I gave our team last year as well as this year was that you can go 31–2, but right or wrong, you will be judged on the final exam, how you play in the postseason. The regular season is just jockeying for NCAA Tournament position. The interesting thing about our championship team is that Kevin Ware wound up being the inspirational leader and Chane Behanan the physical presence. But both players were suspended during parts of the regular season. After their suspensions, I sat them down and told them, nobody will remember a day of this if you’ll go out and have a successful finish. And boy, was that the case for them!

At the beginning of the 2013 postseason, Adidas sent our team warm-up shirts that said, “Rise to the Occasion.” Watching Kevin and our team rise to that difficult occasion and grow from it turned one of my worst moments on a basketball court to the best week ever.

This book is about that journey, not just within a basketball season, but within life.

No matter what your situation as you open this book, nor my situation while writing it, we are faced with the responsibility of moving forward. We owe it to our families, our communities, and ourselves. No matter how difficult and distracting life is, our job is to focus, to work through it, to keep our eyes and our efforts where they belong. Every day, you can find stories about people who could not do that, whose lives or careers left the tracks. We know what stresses people. We have to come up with solutions. People are suffering. But adversity does not mean that you cannot experience victory—far from it. I am proof of that, and so are many others you will meet in these pages. If this book in some small way can ease the pain or help spark the climb by sharing the life lessons from thirty-five years of coaching, then the pages that follow will have accomplished their goal.