Pyramids of Success

Coach John Wooden passed away in Los Angeles last Friday night, June 4, at the age of 99. Having grown up in the backyard of UCLA, I lived very much in the shadow of this towering college basketball coach affectionately called the “Wizard of Westwood.” His ten NCAA Championships at UCLA in a 12-year period stand as an unmatched record. His UCLA teams won a record 88 games in a row, 98 straight home games in Pauley Pavilion, four perfect 30-0 seasons. He was and remains a legend. To say that John Wooden experienced success in his lifetime is, to put it mildly, a vast understatement.

It is thus all the more interesting to learn how Wooden defined success. He was fond of telling the story of how, in his youth, a teacher in Indiana asked the class to write an essay in response to the question: “What is success?” At the time, his answer was what you would expect: fame, fortune, or power. But in the years that followed, Wooden grew older, becoming a teacher, a coach, and a parent. He reformulated his answer based on advice he had received from his father years earlier: “Don’t worry about being better than somebody else, but never try ceasing to be the best you can be.” Long before the world of management gurus and Power Point displays, Wooden drafted a diagram that he would take with him throughout his career, giving it to all his players – a document called the “Pyramid of Success.” The Pyramid outlines the foundational building blocks and process by which a basketball player, a team, any human being can arrive at success: skill, conditioning, team spirit, confidence, self control, poise, all the things that contribute towards the desired end. The most interesting part of the pyramid is the apex, the peak of success according to Wooden: “Success is the peace of mind that is a direct result of the self-satisfaction of knowing you did your best to become the best that you are capable of being.”

Wooden achieved more success as a coach than any of his peers, past or future, more than any person can hope for in his or her given field. But for Wooden, reaching the top had nothing to do with winning or losing, or for that matter, with reaching an external goal. Being successful has nothing to do with being the smartest, the fastest, the richest, the most powerful, or the most beautiful. Being successful has nothing to do with the acknowledgement of your peers or the public. Being successful has to do with two critical ingredients – relentless effort and deep self-awareness. Did you do your best to become the best that you are capable of being? It is folksy, but it is foolproof and it is all about hard work and knowing your capabilities. It is a definition that can be judged only by the person who has to live with the judgment – you. Not society, not a teacher, not your boss, not a standardized test, and not a balance sheet – only you know if you did your best to become the best that you are capable of being.

If you want a study in contrasts, if you want to look at the exact opposite of Wooden’s metric of success, then you need look no further than the arch-demagogue of our Torah reading – Korah. Korah, who came to Moses with a list of complaints and a series of demands. In the rabbinic mind, the rebellion of Korah and his followers is emblematic of a controversy that is not l’shem shamayim, not for the sake of heaven. The rabbis note an oddity in the very way that Korah’s complaint is introduced. The text of our parasha reads: “And Korah, son of Izhar, son of Levi, along with Datan and Abiram the sons of Eliav and Ohn son of Reuven… took.” Rabbinic tradition noted the odd phrasing of this verse, “and Korah took.” It is odd in English as well as in the original Hebrew. What exactly did Korah take? The sentence is missing a direct object. One cannot take without taking something. The rabbis respond to their own question by explaining that the syntax of the verse is an insight into Korah’s character – he was by definition “a taker.”

It wasn’t so much what he said, how he said it, or what he asked for that was the crux of the issue. The problem was that Korah had a corrosive sense of entitlement; he wanted success by way of shortcuts. He sought recognition and reputation, but not by means of his own efforts. The world owed him and he was going to take, he was going to get his due. But what he thought was his due was a due that was undeserved and could never be satiated. Not once, but twice Moses responds with the rhetorical refrain “Is it not enough for you?” “Is it not enough for you that God made you a distinct people?! Is it not enough for you that God has brought you to a land flowing with milk and honey?!” The word dayenu was not in Korah’s vocabulary, nor was the idea of being satisfied by means of hard work. In a sense, neither Moses nor God could address his demand, for his very nature would ensure that success would remain forever elusive.

Korah’s ambition lacked the two ingredients of Wooden’s definition of success – self awareness and hard work. There was nothing inside, no foundation, no cornerstone, nothing to back up his hollow demands. He was someone who wanted a title, recognition, and reputation, but not to earn or deserve them by merit, hard work, or character. There was a disturbing asymmetry between what he wanted and the effort he was willing to put forth.

Success for Wooden, and for all of us, is when there is a consistency between appearances and essence, between effort and expectation. Wooden’s pyramid of success is worthy of examination not because he eschews achievement – I am sure Wooden was very proud of his team’s winning record – but rather because his ethic insists that success come by way of diligence, knowing oneself, and sustained dedication. Korah had the equation backward.

Public recognition and achievement are not unimportant, on the contrary, they are. All of us need be aware of how our world does and doesn’t assign recognition and define success. It would be foolish to think otherwise. But this awareness cannot and should not be determinative. It is striking to consider how elusive normative definitions of success are for all of our Biblical heroes. Think about it. Adam and Eve are thrown out of the Garden of Eden. Sarah, Rebecca, Rachel all die with unfinished business. Jacob and Joseph die in the land of Egypt. Moses never reaches the Promised Land. King David dies loveless and never builds the Temple he was supposed to establish. None of our major Biblical figures get everything done, none of their bucket lists are fully checked off. Yet, these are our matriarchs and patriarchs, our heroes, because in their time, they were the ones who left it all out on the field – they were the ones who achieved success.

So too in our own day, so too in our own lives. My workplace is right here – your synagogue. I look back on the year gone by and I am very proud of what we have done. I also know as we head into summer, that for all our accomplishments, there have also been many mistakes, programs that didn’t go the way we hoped, some that never even got off the ground. But I say to myself, and more importantly, say to the professional and lay leadership of the congregation, as long as we know deep down in our heart of hearts that we left it all out on the field, that we worked hard and smart and creatively to the best of our ability, fine – dayenu. As Churchill wrote: “Success is never final, failure is never fatal. It’s courage that counts.” In this season of end-of-year reports, graduation speeches, and other summations, let’s make sure that we are judging our community by the metric that we would each ask for ourselves.

It would be nice to think we live in a meritocracy where hard work was always acknowledged, where the industrious were rewarded and the undeserving got what they should get. But we don’t live in that world. Sometimes, the wrong person gets the job, the account goes elsewhere, and our best efforts are overlooked by those who are in the position to put us on teams or give us promotions. Sometimes we all are left to squirm in an unfair world. I guarantee that no matter who you are, there will always be someone with a bigger car, a higher GPA, better sermons, or what appears to be a happier home life. Given that this is the case, it seems to me that none of us is well served by letting someone else measure our worth. The best we can do is… our best. The only person who knows whether you delivered everything you are capable of is you. “Success is not,” Wooden wrote, “something that others can give to you.” It must come from within, from within each of us.

Growing up, I would try to memorize famous quotations, a quirky habit for a kid, but what can you do? I’m not sure how it happened, but clearly Wooden’s definition of success made the cut. Since then, I, like many in this room, have experienced a few setbacks and thankfully also enjoyed much for which I am deeply grateful. What I have come to know, as we all do, is that there are times when we are recipients of misplaced criticism and times when we are granted undeserving praise. This is why I remain grateful for John Wooden’s definition of success. Only I know if I gave it my all, only I know if I was true to my ideals, only I know if I did everything to become the best that I am capable of becoming. It is the best, the most difficult, and the most honest measure by which to measure our deeds. Or as Emerson wrote: “Nothing can bring you peace of mind but yourself. Nothing can bring you peace but the triumph of principles.”