To Be the Best
Vincent Thomas Lombardi (June 11, 1913 – September 3, 1970) was an American football coach. He was the head coach of the Green Bay Packers of the NFL
from 1959-67, winning five league championships during his 9 years. Lombardi's NFL championship records were established on the philosophy of "To Be the Best".
Vince Lombardi taught a lesson that inspired this site, "Always be the best you can be!!" Some of his most famous quotes are as follows:
- “The difference between a successful person and others is not a lack of strength, not a lack of knowledge, but rather in a lack of will.”
- “Leaders aren't born, they are made. And they are made just like anything else, through hard work. And that's the price we'll have to pay to achieve that goal, or any goal.”
- “I firmly believe that any man's finest hour, the greatest fulfillment of all that he holds dear, is the moment when he has worked his heart out in a
good cause and lies exhausted on the field of battle - victorious”
- “A man can be as great as he wants to be. If you believe in yourself and have the courage, the determination, the dedication, the competitive drive and if you are willing to sacrifice the little things in life and pay the price for the things that are worthwhile, it can be done.”
- “The price of success is hard work, dedication to the job at hand, and the determination that whether we win or lose, we have applied the best of ourselves to the task at hand.”
- “Practice does not make perfect. Only perfect practice makes perfect.”
- “The achievements of an organization are the results of the combined effort of each individual.”
- “The measure of who we are is what we do with what we have.”
- “If you'll not settle for anything less than your best, you will be amazed at what you can accomplish in your lives.”
- “Perfection is not attainable, but if we chase perfection we can catch excellence.”
- “Winning isn't everything, but the will to win is everything.”
- “It is time for us all to stand and cheer for the doer, the achiever -- the one who recognizes the challenges and does something about it.”
- “It's not whether you get knocked down, it's whether you get up.”
- “Life's battles don't always go to the stronger or faster man. But sooner or later the man who wins, is the man who thinks he can.”
This last quote of, “Life's battles don't always go to the stronger or faster man. But sooner or later the man who wins, is the man who thinks he can.” is
what we would like to focus this site on. In particular, "...the man who wins, is the man who thinks he can.”
“For as he thinks within himself, so he is.” (Proverbs 23:7) --King Solomon
King Solomon is well known for being one of the wisest men ever to walk the earth. This aspect of the "wisdom of Solomon" is simply stating that
the way we "THINK" determins who we are and become. We have done some work on presenting this popular "new-age" concept, called, "The Law of Attraction", in our other site
Fantasize IT.com, but below we would like to go into the "congitive restructuring" of our "THOUGHT".
Cognitive restructuring in cognitive therapy is the process of learning to refute cognitive distortions, or fundamental "faulty thinking," with the goal of replacing one's irrational, counter-factual beliefs with more accurate and beneficial ones.
The cognitive restructuring theory holds that your own unrealistic beliefs are directly responsible for generating dysfunctional emotions and their resultant behaviors, like stress, depression, anxiety, and social withdrawal, and that we humans can be rid of such emotions and their effects by dismantling the beliefs that give them life. Because one sets unachievable goals — "Everyone must love me; I have to be thoroughly competent; I have to be the best in everything" — a fear of failure results. Cognitive restructuring then advises to change such irrational beliefs and substitute more rational ones: "I can fail. Although it would be nice, I didn't have to be the best in everything." [Ellis and Harper, 1975; Ellis 1998]
This is accomplished by leading the subject to:
- Gain awareness of detrimental thought habits
- Learn to challenge them
- Substitute life-enhancing thoughts and beliefs
The rationale used in cognitive restructuring attempts to strengthen the client's belief that 1) 'self-talk' can influence performance, and 2) in particular self-defeating thoughts or negative self-statements can cause emotional distress and interfere with performance, a process that then repeats again in a cycle.
Anger management:
Anger management programs have used Cognitive Restructuring to help high-anger drivers stay calm and collected. Anger control training combines cognitive restructuring with social skills training, thus helping the chronically angry to overcome their rage that arises in specific situations as well as their general anger against themselves, loved ones and the world in general. Interestingly, Cognitive Restructuring has also shown great beneficence in the pre-release preparations of criminals, reducing recidivism.
Depression:
An example of how cognitive restructuring can be used in treating clinical depression is to find a statement that describes the cause of the depression, such as "I lost my job today." and to turn this into a positive affirmation "but hopefully I will find a new job." Some refer to this general technique as “reframing” or “frame braking “. In clinical depression the triggers of the feelings of hopelessness and helplessness are often concealed and using cognitive therapy and communicating in words about what the causes of the feelings are has the effect of making it possible to identify triggers. Thought processes are activated by external stimuli and so finding what external stimuli activate these thought processes restructures the way the mind deals with triggering stimuli. For example if being in a party where everybody is laughing and dancing causes depression cognitive therapy investigates the thought process that is triggered by the external stimuli. A statement about the stimuli explaining the trigger is: "I do not know how to dance, I will never be as happy as those people." and a restructuring statement is: "I want to learn how to dance." This is a way of changing a belief from a negative to a positive one. This is extremely useful in treating depression and schizophrenia. The key to changing behavior is changing the cognitive structure from passive to active and creating behaviors by first changing the mind.
Social phobia:
Cognitive restructuring, integrated with exposure techniques, is used in Cognitive-Behavioral Group Therapy (CBGT) to break the cycle of social anxiety. CR is used to conquer social phobia both in the therapist's office and in the client’s daily life. Under the therapist's direction, clients are guided through cognitive restructuring before, during, and after in-session exposures to high-anxiety social situations. Then for homework, clients are asked to engage in cognitive restructuring activities before, during, and after each assigned in vivo exposure.
Trauma victim anxiety:
Cognitive restructuring, in combination with other techniques, has been used successfully to reduce anxiety in many people from trauma victims to students suffering from test anxiety to diabetes-related issues. It has also helped patients struggling with Post Traumatic Stress Disorder, Body Dysmorphic Disorder (BDD), substance abuse habits and non-generalized social phobia.
Non-Clinical Applications:
CR is used extensively in the life skills curriculum created by ACCI for rehabilitating both juvenile and adult criminals. Apparently, their theory is that crime is a result of faulty thinking, and therefore, can be "cured" through cognitive restructuring.
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