The two teams that played in the Word Series this year, Texas and St. Louis played more than 170 baseball games this year, not including exhibition/pre-season games.
That’s a lot of work!
There were a lot of teams that played almost as many but only one champion. Here are a few things I noticed about them.
1. Practice helps you prepare for your time in the spotlight. These teams don’t just arrive on game day and play. These men prepare for years for their time in the limelight. If it’s true for athletes, why are you just showing up for interviews and “winging it?”
Were you so good at your job that people looked at you and said, “Heah! let’s make him senior management!” Of course, not. Interviewing is a skill like any other that can be learned through practice and repetition.
And practice is preferable to interviewing and losing an opportunity you want because of lack of preparedness.
2. There are times you’re going to fail. Learn from it fast. Move on.
The Series was an emotional rollercoaster. You get so close to winning a game when the other team makes a clutch hit, the game ends and you’re going to go home and then return to the ballpark the next day.
You are going to experience disappointment. There are interviews you are going to really want and not get and jobs you really want and someone else will get . . .maybe even someone you work with now.
Is there something you can learn from it? Maybe, yes. Maybe, no.
But you still have to get over it and go on to the next chore of your job search and do well. Don’t lose out on the second opportunity because you are disappointed with losing the first.
3. Get coaching. The star catcher on Texas was traded to them. Why? The manager of his previous team, a former catcher himself, didn’t think he played defense well-enough. Texas saw that he could hit and made a few changes in his mechanics and are very happy with him.
Don’t do this by yourself. Hire a coach to help you.
4. Don’t get psyched out.
Fans love to imagine stars in their lineup. The one great star in this year’s World Series was Albert Pujols and he had a pretty bad series. Instead, these were two teams of good players, not great players, who believed in themselves.
You can win your next interview if you do all the little things that make a champion a champion and don’t think you can coast your way into the “Professional Hall of Fame.”
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