The “Perfect Every Play” Mentality: Lessons from Nick Saban for Parents
“Perfection is not attainable, but if we chase perfection we can catch excellence.” – Vince Lombardi
Nick Saban is one of the most successful college football coaches of all time. In his 30 years as a head coach, he won 7 National Titles, including 6 at the University of Alabama. He recently decided to retire, and there has been a lot written about what he did that brought him this success. One of his key principles was not to focus on the outcome of the game. The focus should be on the current task at hand and our quest to be as perfect as we can on those individual tasks.
This is summed up by his philosophy of perfecting every play. This meant the team should not focus on the scoreboard during the game. All their attention needs to be on the current play and their job once the ball is put in play. The mindset is that if we keep all our focus on doing our best in the current moment, the score will take care of itself, and the team will find itself victorious. This mindset allows us to
Stay Present – Taking care of the here and now allows us to be in the moment. When we are not worried about the past, what we have done wrong, or the future, and all that needs to go right for us to get to where we want to be, then we create great moments now.
Continuous Improvement – So many times we get stuck in a rut as parents because of something we did in the past where we were not perfect on a given play. Maybe we were quick to anger or judgment. Maybe we were putting our own needs ahead of our family. When you keep your focus on the moment, and the current play, all you can do is learn from those mistakes. Do not dwell on them. Perfect play focus helps us learn, grow, and not get lost in the past of an outcome we can’t change.
We can find many takeaways and parallels in our day-to-day lives in our families with this mindset. Think of how many interactions you have with your family members on a given day. What if you just focused on being perfect in each one of those conversations? It does not mean we will always be perfect, but it does mean we will get better.
At the end of the day that’s what our family really needs. Not someone who is perfect on every play, but someone who has that mindset. Because while we may not be perfect we are getting better with each imperfectly perfect play.
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