John Wooden’s Pyramid Of Success: What It Is And What It Proposes
John Wooden’s pyramid of success is a model that talks about the values necessary for us to achieve everything we set our minds to It was originally used for the sports world, with great success, which is why it spread to the business field and even personal life.
This model has been so famous thanks to the fact that its creator, a coach of university basketball teams, achieved many victories on the court by applying his pyramid that, more than telling us what we have to do to get what we want, he proposes the philosophy to follow. if we want to be successful in our lives.
Today we are going to delve deeper into this pyramid of success and what are the values that make it up, determining how successful a person is with everything they set their mind to.
John Wooden’s Pyramid of Success is a behavioral model created to improve the performance of basketball players. As time went by, this pyramid went beyond the playing fields, becoming not only a very useful model in other sports but also applied to other areas, especially the business sector and personal life It is considered one of the best tools to achieve goals, both individual and group.
It is named after the person who invented it, John Robert Wooden (1910-2010), a basketball team coach at the prestigious University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA). Under his direction, the university team won 10 of the 12 titles that were contested. Wooden did not go down in history for those triumphs, but for the philosophy behind the successes of the university basketball team, synthesized in the pyramid of success.
This model is not a simple guide of what needs to be done to be successful, but rather a recommendation of what values we must develop and internalize in our lives to achieve what we propose For this reason, it is not only applicable to the field of sports, but to many others since it marked a way of understanding life and achieving goals, whatever they may be.
John Wooden conceived of success as an iceberg, and we can see it in his model.
Parts and structure of the pyramid
In John Wooden’s pyramid of success we usually talk about five levels, although if we encompass the values according to their degree of importance we can distinguish three main sectors: the base, the body and the apex. Each of them encompasses fundamental values to be worked on if you want to achieve any goal, be it sports, work, academic, social or vital.
At the base of the success pyramid, also known as level 5, we find 5 components that are considered to support the rest of the structure. These are:
1. Industriousness
The way to succeed in anything is work It is necessary to invest effort in what we want to achieve. Industriousness is a fundamental value, the first one that should be acquired and applied if you want to achieve success. Constant work is a requirement to achieve everything we set out to do.
2. Enthusiasm
The conviction and desire to do what is done They are fundamental aspects to be successful in what we have set out to do. These two elements are components of what is called enthusiasm in John Wooden’s pyramid of success model.
3. Friendship
No matter how much our achievements are, there have always been other people who have helped us achieve them. Friendship is something that facilitates the achievement of any goal and purpose, even in the most formal environments such as work Having friends increases enthusiasm, effort and perseverance towards the goal you want to achieve.
4. Loyalty
Loyalty should be, first, to oneself and then to other people and goals. Loyalty can be understood in this model as consistency with what you want to achieve
5. Cooperation
Cooperation is another aspect that serves as the basis for being successful in what one wants. It involves helping others and being helped When each person becomes a powerful stimulus for others to be constant and, in turn, gains more motivation and desire to continue with what that person was doing, the final goal is more likely to be reached.
The body of the pyramid
The second major sector of John Wooden’s pyramid of success is the body. Here we would find the values that help the purpose that one proposes to be maintained over time. Here we find the following 7 values, corresponding to levels 4 and 3 in most infographics about this pyramid:
6. Initiative
You have to have initiative, go for what you want and not wait for it to come to us by magic Decisions must be made and an active role taken to move forward. You should never be afraid of failure, but rather see it as an opportunity to learn and do better next time. Those who do not try lose more than those who try and fail, because the latter takes something in the form of learning and experiences.
Purpose refers to the planning necessary to achieve the goal. It would be the conscious and more or less meticulous roadmap that one must follow to achieve what one has proposed This does not mean that it is immovable and inflexible, since the context may change and make it necessary to incorporate certain modifications to that roadmap.
8. Self-control
Self-control can be understood with make a constant effort to maintain balance in difficult times Along the way there will be ups and downs, but if you control yourself and avoid falling into the temptation of laziness, reluctance and surrender, you will achieve much of what you set out to do.
You may be interested: “Self-control: 7 psychological tips to improve it”
9. Alert
With alertness you avoid falling into overconfidence. It is necessary to be aware of any changes that may occur, especially when this alters our plans. Goals are not achieved until they have actually been achieved By this we mean that no matter how close we are to it, even if we only have one step left, if we don’t take it we will never be able to say that we have achieved what we had set out to do.
10. Condition
You have to prepare, learn, develop skills and alleviate weaknesses. It is essential to stay in good physical, psychological and mental shape, regardless of what the proposed goal is
For example, if some soccer players want to win the next match, in addition to training they must control their emotions on the day of the match, prepare themselves psychologically so that desperation and nerves do not play tricks on them the day they are on the field.
Another would be to pass the university exams. Studying will have to be studied, but if you take care of your physical health, control your diet, play sports and learn to manage your emotions, you will have a better chance of being successful in the upcoming evaluations.
11. Skill and ability
Every essential task to achieve our final goal must be practiced as if our lives depended on it. Skill is the ally of success and, therefore, the tasks related to our objective They must be repeated and practiced until we do them without errors, quickly and skillfully
12. Team spirit or collaboration
Even if the goal we have set for ourselves is individual, the help of others will always be needed. You must think collectively have team spirit and understand that the best purposes are those that benefit many other people.
At the vertex all the values that we have seen up to this point come together, resulting in three traits that are fundamental to achieving everything we set out to do. It corresponds to level 2 of some infographics, and contains the following values:
13. Character
In John Wooden’s pyramid of success, character is understood as the strength of maintain all the values of the previous sectors, in addition to cultivating and increasing them It is also the ability to be authentic in all situations.
14. Trust
Trust is that each person must believe in their own capacities If you achieve this, it will be a matter of time before you also gain the trust of others, and you should never fall into pedantry.
15. Competitiveness
We can understand competitiveness as knowing how to compete, learning from the moments of greatest difficulty and responding with courage and determination to challenges. The more difficult the path, the sweeter the final success
The success
Success is the last level of the pyramid, graphically represented as the tip of it. For John Wooden, this success is summed up in the following phrase:
“Success is the peace of mind that is born as a natural result of the intimate satisfaction achieved by knowing that one did the best one could to become the best one is capable of being.”
This success can only be judged by oneself because each person will know if they have achieved it or not and what feelings the fact of having achieved it awakens in them.
We can extract many things from John Wooden’s pyramid of success. Among them, you cannot reach your goal alone, and you will always need other people no matter how individual the goal you set out to achieve is. Cooperation with other people and team spirit are very high values and useful in achieving anything we have set out to do.
Besides, We must show enthusiasm all along the way, not lose sight of the original road map, have a firm character and trust in ourselves , these and many other values being the key to success. You should never be afraid of failing, because you always learn something from failure.
