Self Confidence vs. Ego
I am reading a book right now by David J. Lieberman called You Can Read Anyone
While I initially purchased this book to improve upon my already incredible sales skills, I have found a lot of useful information that applies to Little League. The most prominent point in the book involves ego vs. self confidence, and it is very enlightening.
According to Leiberman, the common definition of ego differs from the psychiatric one. So, I went to dictionary.com and looked it up. According to Merriam-Webster’s dictionary, here is the definition:
the one of the three divisions of the psyche in psychoanalytic theory that serves as the organized conscious mediator between theperson and reality especially by functioning both in the perception of and adaptation to reality
Basically, in layman’s terms, Leiberman defines ego as a defensive mechanism. One that cannot allow a person to be responsible for anything that is wrong in their life. The bigger the ego, the less personal responsibility one is willing to take, but inversely, the bigger the self-esteem, the more likely we are to admit mistakes, forgive others, and rely not on anything anybody else says, only on what we know is truly right.
The reason he goes on about this at great length in the book is because you must first establish whether a person is self confident, or egotistical (in the psychological sense) before you can begin to read them. This is so true of little ones.
How many times have you heard a kid come to the dugout after striking out blaming the umpire’s strike zone? How many times does a kid boot a grounder and say “it hit a rock” or something of the like. This is the ego getting in the way, or from a coaches perspective, this is a kid lacking in self confidence.
What is the inverse of this? The kid strikes out and says, “man that was a good change up, I won’t swing at it next time though”. Or, “geez, I should have had that ball, sorry guys, I will get it next time”. That is a player with self confidence who is destined to succeed! The appropriate response from a teammate? A pat on the back and “That’s alright, you will get the next one”.
So where do they derive their lack of self confidence? A lot of it is inexperience. I have spoken often here of the “light bulb” syndrome, where suddenly you see a light bulb in a player’s mind turn on and they “get it”. They just start doing things right, and confidently. But that is down the road.
I believe that kids lacking self confidence have not been allowed to fail. They are sheltered and have no real experience as far as success and failure go. The ONLY path to success is through failure. Any good businessman knows this, and every coach on the planet preaches it daily. If parents shelter their kids from failure, or make excuses for their shortcomings, they are not allowing their self confidence to grow, and their ego must take over. Because our ego will not allow us to be failures, so we must blame the world for everything that is wrong with our life.
How do we overcome this? Youth sport is a fantastic way to build self confidence. Even a kid that strikes out every time occasionally walks, that is a confidence building opportunity! When they actually get a hit, holy cow! Now we have a beaming smile of confidence. Ever notice how hitting is contagious? This is why, confident batters are successful, those that allow their ego to cast blame, usually fail.
One of my favorite sayings is “in baseball you get paid millions of dollars for failing 7 out of 10 times, don’t be afraid to fail, without failure, there is no success”. It is so true. I read an article about this at littleleague.org the other day and they were asking if parents were confident enough to allow their little johnie or janie to fail and still stay out of it?
Are you? Can you? How about yourself? Do you blame the world for everything that is wrong in your life or do you accept responsibility and apologize to those you have wronged? A self confident person apologizes, an egotist continues blaming the world. Which will you be?
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Gray and Sons Watches
I have to admit that I am jealous when I see a guy in a fine suit and an expensive watch. Athletes, entertainers, and corporate executives all seem to look sharp in their $40,000 rolex watches . Gray and Sons specializes in used, preowned, and estate watches. They have a large selection and a variety of lines to offer.
Their line of Rolex watches for sale offers a large selection to choose from from a $40,000 watch to a $2,000 watch. While I can’t afford a watch that expensive today, when I can, I will definitely be checking out Gray and Sons before I make my purchase.
Rolex is not the only line they offer though. They offer a fine selection of Cartier watches , some of the most stylish and recognizable in the world. They have a nice selection of men’s and women’s watches as well, they don’t seem to lean towards one gender or the other.
One line I was unfamiliar with, being the stylin’ dude I am, was Patek Philippe . I have obviously been missing out. Apparently they are the cream of the crop for Swiss watches, who knew, probably someone willing to spend $52,900 on a watch. Again, very nice timepiece.
Our baseball idols always seem to show up in style. I don’t know what drives them to purchase watches like this, it has to be a status symbol. I supposed if I had the money, I would invest in a piece like this as well, soon you will see me sportin’ a $50,000 watch from Gray and Son, and then you can say I have made it.
Little League Coach Hosted by Bluehost
Since its inception, The Little League Coach website has been hosted by Bluehost. There are thousands of internet providers out there and determining which one to use was mind boggling.
After extensive research, we decided to use Bluehost. The main reason was their ability to instantly install our blog software, Wordpress.
In about 5 minutes, literally, we had a fully operational blog with all the basic bells and whistles. It was so easy, we were suspicious. To use wordpress with Bluehost you simply sign up for the service, click on the extras, click on the “install wordpress” button, answer a few configuration questions and viola, you are done!
They are much more though. They offer a ton of services and anything you would ever need for your website. Whether you are starting an ecommerce site, a blog, or an information hub, we highly recommend that you use Bluehost.
CLICK HERE TO SIGNUP FOR BLUEHOST.COM NOW.
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Extreme Baseball Not So Extreme
National Extreme Baseball
Tonight I took the kids to check out National Extreme Baseball . The game pitted the Orlando Dragons against the Daytona Stingrays. For those of you who don’t know (I was one of them until tonight), Extreme baseball is a modified version of the original game.
The Basics
The basic changes are as follows:
1. Both teams are on the field at the same time
2. Two sets of bases exist, the standard called the Weid (pronounced wide) side and a second set called the flip side
3. The flip side bases are run counter-clockwise
4. Pitchers rotate pitches to each batter so only one team is playing at once
5. Once all three outs are recorded on one team, the other completes its half of the inning.
Doesn’t Life up to the Hype
I have to admit I was leary of changing the national pastime. I was right. The thing Extreme Baseball tries to make it so great is its downfall. The game we saw was a ten-inning nail biter won 2-1 by the Dragons. Well, at least it should have been.
First of all, it was very confusing. You never knew where the out was to be made, the players often didn’t know either. Also, you were never really sure what the count was or how many outs their were. Niether did the announcer, who also happened to be the president of the league!
Tied at 1-1 going into the 10th inning it should have been exciting. But it was anticlimactic. There was no real finality to the game. Also, I was never really sure what there was going on at any given time, who was supposed to field the ball, nor where they were supposed to throw it.
Forget the fact that the teams were less than impressive, I expected that going in, but calling this "extreme" is mislabeling it. There is nothing extreme about it. Today’s world of the X-games, which are truly extreme, demands that anything called "extreme baseball" be out there! If the pitchers pitched at the same time, now that would be extreme and probably entertaining as well. A little dangerous I imagine, but definitely entertaining.
Should Have Stayed Home
The bottom line is that I would have rather stayed home and watched the Little League World Series than go to this game. It was a valiant effort, but it comes up short of the hype. Maybe with some polishing it can work, but eliminating the chess game from the thinking man’s game does not make it better, it makes it boring.
Have you seen extreme baseball? What do you think?
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Bills Got the Best of Me
Every now and then I like to take a look into my own personal life lessons to provide guidance for my readers. Some people are born with a natural instinct to save money and not spend more than they make. I am not one of those. I think Dave Ramsey said it best on his Fox Business Network show when he said “I have always been able to make money, it is holding on to it that I find difficult”. I am paraphrasing, but this definately describes me!
In my youth, one of my dumbest sayings was “it’s only money, you can always make more”. I was fooling myself. Retaining money and staying out of debt are the most important things you can do to further your financial situation. No matter how much money you make, interest will eat right into it. My brother is a big stickler for eliminating debt, I didn’t used to agree with him, but now I have to admit he was right. Man I hate when that happens!
Anyway, my point is, everyone has financial struggles every now and again. A long, long time ago my live-in girlfriend and I were struggling making our bills. Her dad gave her some great words of wisdom. He told her no matter how much you make, there will aways be times you can’t make your bills. You just increase your lifestyle. I once heard Robin Quivers say that about Howard Stern. She told him, “you just move your lifestyle right up their with your pay”. This was before he was a $100 million dollar man!
If you find yourself in this situation, the first thing to do is get out of debt fast! A site that can help you is called BillsIQ . Check it out, if you can reduce your obligations, consolidate your payments, and reduce your overall monthly outlay, you can begin to chip away at that agonizing debt.
Click the link below to visit bills.com.
BillsIQ
Have you ever faced financial challenges? How did you deal with them?
Sirius Stiletto 2 Kicks Butt!
OK, now you are asking, how does this relate to Little League? Great question! We all host tournaments, even it if is only our district playing, we need music between the innings and games! This is the answer!
You Have to Have Music!
First, you have to have music during your tournaments. You also need to introduce your players. This is simple to accomplish. A cheap amp and speakers from any store like radio shack will suffice. We are fortunate enough to have a concert system donated from the Moose Lodge that kicks butt! Very small and concise, but very powerful.
Two cords for speakers, 1 for the mike, and and MP3 player is all you need. You simply hook up the MP3 player to the system with an 1/8" to stereo RCA jack adapter cable. Again, $2 at Radio Shack or Wal-Mart. Then let the fun begin!
How to Get the Music to Play
I was going to have to download about $100 worth of music to play! Not really my idea of a good investment. Enter the Sirius Stiletto 2 ! I already have Sirius Satellite radio, I hear songs I forgot I knew! If a song is published, they play it. Never a dull listening moment. But the Stiletto 2 takes it to a whole different level!
Is it a DAR?
Anyone familiar with a Digital Video Recorder for a television will instantly understand the power of the Stiletto 2. I guess you would call this an Digital Audio Recorder (DAR). I have never heard it called that, but that is what we will call it here. Can this be possible you are thinking? Yes, ONLY BETTER THAN YOU CAN IMAGINE!
The Secret Button!
The most kick-butt part of it? The little "heart" button. Like a song you are listening to? Hit the heart button and (go ahead smile now because you know what is coming!) YES it records the song!!! In full digital quality! Amazing!
I have spent the last 3 days recording music for the sectional we are hosting on Saturday! Man is this fun! The only problem I am experiencing is if the DJ talks over the music then it records that as well. But I have learned not to record those. For personal use, I could tolerate it, just don’t want it in my recordings for Saturday.
There’s More!
OK, so that is cool enough right? You are ready to buy right? I was as well. BUT this thing also is an MP3 player with more memory than you could ever want or use. It has 2 gig onboard and a slot for an 8 gig add on card. The best part? It plays mp3 AND wma files. My biggest problem w/ the ipod is it doesn’t play wma files. I saves about 250 CD’s as wma files about 2 years ago and the ipods won’t play them! Again, Apple kicking their own proprietary butt.
So while all day I record the latest, greatest, and oddest songs I do not already have in my library. At night I am transferring songs from my personal collection. When all is said and done I will have more than enough music for Saturday. After Saturday I will load my entire collection of songs from my PC onto this thing and continue to record as I hear songs I like. I love this thing!
It Goes Anywhere
It picks up the satellite anywhere and comes w/ headphones w/ a receiver in them (not sure if I like my head being the satellite receiver, but I guess it’s safe). It also comes with standard ear bud headphones. Obviously go buy some Bose headphones if you are really into it. It is 100% portable. If you want it in the car you will need the car kit. If you already have a car kit installed it will adapt to that. Make sure to use the power adapter that came w/ the unit though otherwise it won’t sound good and probably will damage it (learned this the hard way).
There Can’t Be More Can There?
It also has wifi capability to listen to internet radio. I haven’t used this yet and doubt I will really, but you can use it if you are in the office and want to listen to live music. Personally, I just listen to my personal and saved library while in the house. Which, btw, I can do w/ my shuffle feature. I love the shuffle feature of everything, for some reason I find it cool not to know what song is next, only now I know I will probably like the song!
Finally, you can use the recurring record function to record shows that you listen to on a daily basis.
This thing does much much more as well, but the functions above make it worth every dollar! Go buy a Sirius Stiletto 2 now!
What is your opinion of the Stiletto 2 ?
Dialmycalls.com is Perfect for Coaches and More!
David Batcherlor, owner of dialmycalls.com , contacted me a few days ago because he felt his product was perfect for Little League coaches. While I agree with him, I would certainly not restrict it to Little League Coaches! I would recommend this product for ANYONE that has multiple people to call w/ the same message! This thing rocks!
Easy Set Up
As it so happened, we had rain tonight and our entire district’s all-star games were canceled. The perfect time to give dialmycalls.com a test run! First I navigated over to the site and quickly signed up. Took all of a minute. Once in I clicked on the the Setup a group call link on the right. Step one had me select my free service, step 2 had me record my message. I had the choice of recording my own message, uploading a wav file or having them convert my text to voice.
The service is free for 1 phone call a day to up to 25 people, so they drop a short ad in the front and back of your announcement, but it is really not obtrusive at all! Plus, you can select a male or female voice for the message. Anyone want to take a guess which voice I wanted to hear?
Record You Message
I selected to record my own voice message to broadcast to the board of directors of our league. I clicked, add recording, and ding-aling my phone rang! It prompted me to record my message, which I did, and then hit pound. I could listen to it, rerecord or simply hang up. Done. It took me 10 times as long to type this as it took to actually perform the task.
Add Your Names
Then I added 11 names, phone numbers , and email addresses . Yes, one of the options I selected was to backup your voice message w/ an email wav file just in case they didn’t get your voice mail . (Remember the days when you could avoid people? Those days are over!) This was actually a bit of a chore. It was frustrating because my only options were load phone numbers w/ no names (fast but I knew I would need these numbers for other lists in the future), load names/numbers/emails, or upload a data file.
The data file option would have been nice, but I would have had to have it in excel or .cvs format. Who has that? Would have been much nicer if I could have integrated my data from my outlook, or even better, directly from my cell phone ! Either way, it wasn’t all that bad, and I am sure they are working on some kind of option similar to this.
Anyway, once I had all the names in, I hit the send call now button. I could have scheduled a time to send it, but I chose instantly. It was truly instantly. Before my fingers had time to leave the keyboard my phone was ringing w/ my message and all the board members quickly called me to let me know they got it!
It was FANTASTIC! BEAUTIFUL! What a relief! I took 11 calls and turned them into 1!!!!!!
One thing I forgot to mention, I was able to put the contacts into groups. I created the group Board of Directors, directly from the form that I was inputting the names from! It could not have been more convenient.
Group Administration
Once I completed this, I went to the groups/names admin page. I clicked a check mark next to the names of the board members who also had players on my all-star team and bada-bing bada-boom, created and added them to my all-star team announcement group! I then repeated the chore of adding the additional players names to that team’s group. It was quite simple. I have people in more than one group, but only one entry. That is kind of sweet.
One more thing, the wav file is not actually emailed to your list. A link is. This is nice because there is no need for the receiver to actually open a file. The file is hosted by the dialmycalls.com server and played instantly.
They also offer premium options for larger groups and the prices are very affordable, starting at only 4 1/2 cents a call! They also have a reporting function and what appears to be a fantastic support page.
Gone forever are the days of the phone tree that always broke! Today, we have dialmycalls.com .
Ozzy Ozbourne Butchers Take Me Out to the Ballgame
Image via Wikipedia
I will admit it. I had every ozzy album, every sabbath album, and I loved "the Ozbourne’s" TV show. Some of the greatest music ever created! No doubt about it. But the guy is nuts! Of course we all knew that.
On my way into my day job today I was listening to Mike and Mike in the morning on ESPN . They were playing the worst renditions of the song "Take Me Out to the Ballgame" at Wrigley field. I was shocked at Ozzy’s! You will be too!
Click here to watch it on Utube.
Unbelievable!
Anyone have any other great renditions of this song?
The Final Season, Not Really Very Good
Image via Wikipedia
The Final Season
Just watched The Final Season 
Roanne
I also have to worship him a bit, because when he was doing teen movies back in the day when I was way way younger, he had a last scene where he woke up w/ a nekkit woman. That was Roanne, a girl that used to date Brian from Child’s play and hang out in the Baltimore/Washington club scene that we were so intricately involved in. Obviously, we were all jealous of him at that time!
Boring
Anyway, sorry about that, I know this is a family forum. The move dragged on way to much, didn’t really ever get going and the climax of winning the final championship wasn’t really even enough to keep my attention. This is a great story about a small high school in Iowa that had only 100+ students, yet won 20 straight state championships! How did they do it? Fundamentals according to the coach in the movie.
A story so great could have been told so much better. This is no Bull Durham , that’s for sure!
Anyway, if you have nothing else to do, give it a look, otherwise, skip it!
Anyone else see this movie? Let me know what you thought.
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