Winning the moment

This space has played host to several luminaries over the five years I have been scribbling, today’s missive draws inspiration from something Paul O’Connell shared when addressing the Pendulum Summit.

Referencing Joe Schmidt (another luminary who may be totally unfamiliar to you reader but the author of much success with Leinster Rugby and the Irish set up, according to O’Connell), Schmidt’s approach was “mindfulness for dumb rugby players”. O’Connell does him a disservice. Schmidt’s approach was nothing short of applied classical philosophy to a practical real-world context, a sort of stoicism regardless of what O’Connell called it. O’Connell’s speech at the Summit focused on “winning the moment in front of your face”.

It has been an approach I have advocated with the team at Embley and for the children. Win the moment in front of your face; deal with the matter at hand in the very best way you can. It doesn’t matter what went before, it doesn’t matter what the grand plan might be, it doesn’t matter what anyone will think down the line and it certainly doesn’t matter how you are feeling in the moment – “win the moment in front of your face”. There may be a strategic vision, but it is realised in a series of incremental steps that must be addressed, it is only in looking back that you have a sense of the landscape you have traversed. We are ambitious to be successful and that is realised by winning the moment. 

Where decisions must be made, action taken and so forth, you are called on to deal with every evolving situation, piece by piece, one step at a time, taking the best step each time. So much decision making can be influenced by how we feel about a previous decision; how we feel about what went wrong just now; the mistake I made. Winning the moment in front of your face is about putting all of that negativity out of mind and actively choosing to stay in the moment not stitching moments together into a tapestry of doom or self-aggrandising success where you get lost in the froth of your victories. Win the moment in front of your face.

For the children this can be really challenging. The awareness that exams or a class test may be looming can create a degree of anxiety. That is absolutely fine, we cannot live in an anxiety free life or world to do so would be to cocoon ourselves in unreality feeling nothing. But an appropriate anxiety that sets us for winning the moment in front of our face is absolutely appropriate, even necessary. Their considerations will be about their self-esteem; their sense of themselves set against what others may say or think, what parents will say when the result goes home; what teachers will think of them. Clearly and obviously the performance in a test is no reflection on their worth as a unique individual loved and lovable intrinsically and without compromise.

We don’t compare children and our expectations are humble; we expect nothing less than everything; your best. It doesn’t mean going without accountability, but it does need to be in proportion. Win the moment in front of your face. For parents also this is complex. We all have a desire for our children to be happy, fulfilled, and contented individuals. That grand plan is realised in the discussions about where they are going, with whom and when they will get home or be picked up; win in the moment in front of your face.

In the world of professional sport from whence this piece began this morning, winning the moment has a tangible reality. The opposition are coming through your line, territory is being lost or won, scores are coming or going and such is the ebb and flow of a fixture. Bit like life really. It is always in the moment of trial that winning the moment in front of your face is most challenging but for me most thrilling and rewarding. The capacity to ignore going behind, losing a penalty, or whatever it is and to focus on the next moment afresh is a mindset that can be cultivated. Success and failure are transitory, moments in time that come and go, the only constant is our attitude to dealing with what life throws at us. Character is formed from the incremental winning of the moments in front of us.