Michael Jordan Missed Nearly Half His Shots

As a guy who graduated next-to-last in his high school class yet found himself at Amherst, one of the nation’s elite colleges, where the only thing I knew for sure was that I could work my ass off, few principles have been more valuable than this from the late champion of non-violent communication, Marshall Rosenberg: 

Anything worth doing is worth doing poorly.

Generally, many of us find that a bit counter-intuitive.  Our natural inclination would suggest that there’s hardly a greater aspiration than to be highly accomplished at something––from growing potatoes to loving our children.  

And sure, well developed skills can be invaluable––especially if we’re on the receiving end: heart transplants, wedding cakes, skydiving instruction, family quarrel mediation.  The list is encyclopedic.  

But linking our self-regard to our ability to produce an outcome of a superior nature is risky business if you ask me.  Striving for it is noble.  Needing to get it is death.  There’s only so much room at the top.  Besides, our performance compared to that of others is always out of our control.  And to be attached to anything out of our control is basically a commitment to misery.

Much more rewarding is the willingness to be god awful until god awful and its cousins half-awful and almost doesn’t suck teach us how to improve as we strive to be as good as we can be.  

We experience the satisfaction of embracing rather than avoiding the pain of our ignorance, our fears, and how much failure is necessary to hone virtually any skill.  I can’t tell you how comforting it is to know that basketball legend Michael Jordan missed nearly half his shots.  More and more I appreciate what those missed shots taught him.

At 27, I arrived at Amherst with zero experience writing academic papers.  I was from broadcast news, where the objective is to reduce even the history of the world to a minute or so.  When my first-ever paper, a page-and-a-half double-spaced offering for a history course, was returned to me, I see scrawled above the title “You’re not trying!!!”  I immediately head to the professor.  “What do you mean I’m not trying?” I said.  “It took me a lot of work to cut this down and get to the point.”  He looked at me as if I were a talking horse.  “Just what is your background?” he inquired.  I told him, and he cracked up.  “I hate to break it to you,” he laughed, “but brevity is not a virtue around here.”

Then there are those things worth doing that are vital to a healthy life and yet we may never do them all that well, speaking for myself.   

Managing fear.  Managing conflict.  Freeing ourselves of resentment.  Aligning our commitments with action.  Loving the person in front of us.  Our profession or avocation often makes the list as well.  In my case, offering a perspective that can help another navigate their world with confidence.  

Performing poorly in these arenas means nothing really compared to our pursuit of them with passion and perseverance in learning from our experience.  That’s what eventually leads us to understand ourselves well enough that we are able to make ever healthier choices––no matter how many shots we miss.

I think that’s what our nation’s second president, John Adams, was getting at when he said, “We cannot assure success, but we can deserve it.”