I met Lanny Bassham this month. What an interesting character he is. Lanny is an Olympic gold medalist in rifle shooting. I don’t know a thing about guns in the Olympics, and I knew very little about Lanny Bassham. Susie Minshew, a close friend of mine tried to introduce him or at least his books to me a couple of years ago. In my life of “busy” I missed this great find back then.
As luck would have it, Susie invited me to attend a lunch thing a couple of Fridays ago to meet Mr. Bassham. If I’m honest, I’ll share with you that I didn’t pay a lot of attention to what Susie had asked me to go do. The important thing to me was that I had the time available, and it was an opportunity to spend time with Susie, so I said yes.
Dumb luck – that’s my life. Lanny gave a short presentation about who he was and his Olympic trials and tribulations. I was captivated in a moment when he talked about winning the silver medal during his first attempt at the 1972 Olympics. I was impressed. Most people would have been thrilled I think, but Lanny was pretty disheartened by being the first loser… I think that’s how he referred to “not” winning the gold. He consulted a sports psychologist who shared that if he worked with him that in the next 6 months he could counsel him into being happy with second. That wasn’t what Lanny was looking for.
Lanny took a different path and interviewed many gold medal winners to understand their secret to winning. He created a “mental management system” that he has used over the years to win many gold medals, to coach other athletes, pageant winners, coaches, parents, business leaders and others to win -not come in second.
Meeting Lanny was cool but I must tell you that reading his book, Freedom Flight is one of the most significant books I’ve read all year. On a short flight from DFW to Lubbock, TX, I was absorbed in this story. Lanny says that the experience that he re-tells in the book Freedom Flight is the foundation for the Mental Management System that is taught in his book, With Winning in Mind. As a side note to my bowler friends: I’ve taken the core of his “winning” system to the lanes; and in my last 3 outings I’ve been 600+. Not bad for a no-bowler who travels all the time and only gets to bowl league once in a while!
Good luck with training your staff during 2011 and beyond. If you have any questions, please feel free contact me at beth@trainertainment.net.
