This is the second part of my series regarding adversity called – Mid-Season: Learn About Guts from Stephen Perkins:
this picture is the property of the University of North Florida
In high school, growing up in Yonkers, a few blocks from Yonkers Raceway, gambling came with the turf just like the nation’s best water and incredible pizza.
We played cards every week usually in my friend’s basement. There was generally a game of 6 players, four were high school kids like me and there could be my friend’s uncle or a neighborhood guy.
The stakes would generally be a quarter, half and on a hand, the maximum raise was a dollar.
Most nights you were up or down $20 and if you hit it big or got crushed, it was $50. Two or three times a year, you could win as much as $100 and if you won that much, you were obligated to treat to the Argonaut Diner later that night. Standard fare would be eggs, cheeseburger, disco fries (with cheese and gravy) and for me, it could be the famous moussaka or halibut because I kept things interesting.
We would work after-school delivering the newspaper and odds jobs raking leaves or shoveling snow. That money was used mostly for entertainment purposes.
One game that became popular was called “Guts”. Guts could be 2, 3 or even 5 cards. There could be a wildcard or an opportunity to draw more cards.
They called it Guts because you had to declare to commit to the pot (the amount of money in the middle) without looking at anyone’s cards but your own.
There would be two hours of grinding cards with five to ten dollars rotating around and then someone would call guts and it dominated the rest of the night. If you won in guts, you won the night.
In life, GUTS is making the decision to commit to a dream without any idea of what it would take to make it come true.
In Viktor Frankl’s “Man Search For Meaning”, Frankl breaks down success very process, habit-like and not as an outcome.
“Don’t aim at success — the more you aim at it and make it a target, the more you are going to miss it. For success, like happiness, cannot be pursued; it must ensue, and it only does so as the unintended side-effect of one’s personal dedication to a cause greater than oneself or as the by-product of one’s surrender to a person other than oneself. Happiness must happen, and the same holds for success: you have to let it happen by not caring about it. I want you to listen to what your conscience commands you to do and go on to carry it out to the best of your knowledge. Then you will live to see that in the long run — in the long run, I say — success will follow you precisely because you had forgotten to think of it.” (Frankl)
Perkins after a successful high school coaching career decided that he was going to pursue his dream of being a college basketball coach.
Perkins explains;
“My journey was unique I suppose, but having grown up with a mother and step-father who were educators and coaches at the junior high and high school level, I never saw a “punch-a-clock” mentality. I just saw people who loved young people and tried to make a difference in the next generation.
Even as the extraordinary opportunity presented itself to leave a HS coaching career and move 725 miles across country to Baylor and become a student coach at the age of 36, I saw a college coaching staff made up of guys similar to my parents — educators — former middle school and HS coaches — workers and grinders — they also understood and modeled coaching wasn’t a 9–5 job.
In reality, I understand you have to pay bills, put gas in the car and buy groceries so you just have to figure it out and make it work. I was fortunate to find side jobs in construction and at golf courses — The ability to develop a connection with Five Star Basketball Camps really was a HUGE boost as well, not only financially but providing the chance to network with coaches around the country and learn from some really great people.
It isn’t a path I would ever encourage people to take… it was hard and there was certainly a stretch of time you have to choose to do without some things.
I would not have been able to accomplish any of this without a wife that was completely sold out and supportive. I know it is cliche but life is 10% what happens and 90% how you respond.”
Similarly in “Man’s Search For Meaning”, Frankl says “Everything can be taken from a man but one thing; the last of the human freedoms — to choose one’s attitude in any given set of circumstances, to choose one’s own way.”
Frankl was describing a much different circumstance than Perkins but the message remains the same, you may have no control of what happens but you do control how you internalize and respond to it.
Perkins continues;
“I had a passion and a goal to become a college coach. I had support from my wife and family, I had examples of grinding from family and cohorts and I tried to never get caught up in things that didn’t matter. I think I always looked at it as a kid from the Midwest in the middle of basketball crazy country that was living a dream. I was traveling and coaching and getting to work in these famous arenas around the country I had grown up watching on television. Heck, I was on television (not really intentionally on their part but the camera caught me in the background sometimes).
Making the move 1140 miles to coach at the junior college level provided different challenges but also different opportunities. It was there that I was able to start recruiting and calling on some of these relationships formed through working camps and having the D1 name association.
Again (I) just tried to find a way when the position didn’t pay a full-time wage. I found part-time work as a substitute teacher, worked in the college admissions dept. and financial aid. (I) worked as a weight room supervisor and also continued working summer camps.
I had a good childhood but we never had a lot of extras I guess you can’t miss things you never had…maybe some wouldn’t want my journey …some would feel it was too big of a sacrifice — for me it was just life and I was excited (even if a little tired) living it.”
Acclaimed author, Mel Robbins, describes how we internalize and talk ourselves out of opportunities if we allow ourselves to. It’s part of the mind’s protection reflex, we have a thought that’s different than what we know and the mind starts working to talk us out if it.
This is how Mel came up with her famous, 5 Second Rule, you must act within five seconds to hack this destructive thinking and make the changes necessary to improve your life.
Stephen Perkins went all-in on being a college basketball coach, he didn’t think about if he was qualified, if he was good enough, if he could afford to and because he had GUTS – he won!
