Vince Lombardi’s Inspirational Speech

For my podcast today, I am reblogging a post I wrote several months ago, Vince Lombardi’s inspirational speech.

Get A Printable and An Editable Planner For Free. The Planner Includes A Gratitude Pad And Journaling Pages. Also A 12 Month Fillable Calendar.

Vince Lombardi was a great leader who knew how to motivate men. He was an American football coach, winning many championships. He was the head coach of the Green Bay Packers when they won the first Super Bowl, and The Super Bowl trophy is named after him. Lombardi was famous for his inspirational speeches. One of his most famous speeches is “What It Takes to Be Number One.”

Lombardi was known for his drive and determination, but he is remembered for his leadership. Lombardi was driven to be the best and demanded the same from his players. “What It Takes to Be Number One” was first given in the locker room at halftime. Since then, Lombardi gave this speech many times to businesses and at political conventions.

I have always admired Vince Lombardi. You could say, he is my “go-to” guy for inspiration. Vince Lombardi’s inspirational speech is one of my favorites. I have it on a card hanging up in my office. Now and then, I take it down and read it. Vince Lombardi has been such an inspiration to me I even married a girl named Lombardi.

Lombardi’s Inspirational Speech, “What It Takes To Be Number One”

“Winning is not a sometimes thing; it’s an all the time thing. You don’t do things right once in a while; you do them right all the time. Winning is a habit. Unfortunately, so is losing.”

By doing the right things all the time you will find yourself winning more often than not. Develop the habit of winning in everything that you do

“There is no room for second place. There is only one place in my game, and that’s first place. I have finished second twice in my time at Green Bay, and I don’t ever want to finish second again. There is a second-place ballgame, but it is a game for losers played by losers. It is and always has been an American zeal to be first in anything we do, and to win, and to win, and to win.”

You won’t win every time, nobody does. When you don’t win it should drive you to come in first the next time. Only one team is having fun at the end of a championship game. The winning team.

All In

“Every time a football player goes to ply his trade he’s got to play from the ground up, from the soles of his feet right up to his head. Every inch of him has to play. Some guys play with their heads. That’s O.K. You’ve got to be smart to be number one in any business. But more importantly, you’ve got to play with your heart, with every fiber of your body. If you’re lucky enough to find a guy with a lot of head and a lot of heart, he’s never going to come off the field second.”

Giving it everything you’ve got is how you win. You cannot do things halfway.

Vince-Lombardi's-inspirational-speech-stadium-green-bay

Win

“Running a football team is no different than running any other kind of organization, an army, a political party, or a business. The principles are the same. The object is to win and to beat the other guy. Maybe that sounds hard or cruel. I don’t think it is.”

The objective of any business is all the same. It is to make a profit. If you are not making money in your business, you have a hobby.

Compete

“It is a reality of life that men are competitive and the most competitive games draw the most competitive men. That’s why they are there, to compete. To know the rules and objectives when they get in the game. The object is to win fairly, squarely, by the rules, but to win.”

Competition makes everyone better. It doesn’t have to be nasty and you don’t have to cheat. Do your best and win fairly.

Grind

“And in truth, I’ve never known a man worth his salt who in the long run, deep down in his heart, didn’t appreciate the grind, the discipline. There is something in good men that really yearns for discipline and the harsh reality of head-to-head combat.”

Embrace the grind and everyday challenges. Learn to love the daily routine of making yourself better. Championship teams put more emphasis on practice. They embrace the difficulties of the daily grind. Championships are won during these times.

Read

The final paragraph of his speech is the most important part for me. It sums up what it takes to be number one. Read it many times and let his words take hold of you.

“I don’t say these things because I believe in the “brute” nature of man or that men must be brutalized to be combative. I believe in God, and I believe in human decency. But I firmly believe that any man’s finest hour, his greatest fulfillment to all he holds dear, is that moment when he has to work his heart out in a good cause and he’s exhausted on the field of battle, victorious.”

I love Vince Lombardi’s inspirational speech and hope it helps those still sitting on the sidelines. Get in the game and go after what you want. Thanks for reading and listening.

Cites

https://unsplash.com/@jontyson

What It Takes to Be Number One

Vince Lombardi was a great leader who knew how to motivate men. He was an American football coach, winning many championships. He was the head coach of the Green Bay Packers when they won the first Super Bowl. In fact, the Super Bowl trophy is named after him. Lombardi was famous for his inspirational speeches. One of his most famous speeches is “What It Takes to Be Number One.”

Lombardi was known for his drive and determination, but he is remembered for his leadership. Lombardi was driven to be the best and demanded the same from his players. “What It Takes to Be Number One” was first given in the locker room at halftime. Since then, Lombardi gave this speech many times to businesses and at political conventions.

I have always admired Vince Lombardi. You could say, he is my “go-to” guy for inspiration. “What It Takes to Be Number One” is one of my favorite Lombardi speeches. I have it on a card hanging up in my office. Every now and then, I take it down and read it. Vince Lombardi has been such an inspiration to me I even married a girl named Lombardi. That’s Sofia’s maiden name.

The Speech “What It Takes To Be Number One”

“Winning is not a sometimes thing; it’s an all the time thing. You don’t do things right once in a while; you do them right all the time. Winning is a habit. Unfortunately, so is losing.”

By doing the right things all the time you will find yourself winning more often than not. Develop the habit of winning in everything that you do

“There is no room for second place. There is only one place in my game, and that’s first place. I have finished second twice in my time at Green Bay, and I don’t ever want to finish second again. There is a second-place ballgame, but it is a game for losers played by losers. It is and always has been an American zeal to be first in anything we do, and to win, and to win, and to win.”

You won’t win every time, nobody does. When you don’t win it should drive you to come in first the next time. Only one team is having fun at the end of a championship game. The winning team.

All In

“Every time a football player goes to ply his trade he’s got to play from the ground up, from the soles of his feet right up to his head. Every inch of him has to play. Some guys play with their heads. That’s O.K. You’ve got to be smart to be number one in any business. But more importantly, you’ve got to play with your heart, with every fiber of your body. If you’re lucky enough to find a guy with a lot of head and a lot of heart, he’s never going to come off the field second.”

Giving it everything you’ve got is how you win. You cannot do things halfway.

Win

“Running a football team is no different than running any other kind of organization, an army, a political party, or a business. The principles are the same. The object is to win and to beat the other guy. Maybe that sounds hard or cruel. I don’t think it is.”

The objective of any business is all the same. It is to make a profit. If you are not making money in your business, you have a hobby.

Compete

“It is a reality of life that men are competitive and the most competitive games draw the most competitive men. That’s why they are there, to compete. To know the rules and objectives when they get in the game. The object is to win fairly, squarely, by the rules, but to win.”

Competition makes everyone better. It doesn’t have to be nasty and you don’t have to cheat. Do your best and win fairly.

Grind

“And in truth, I’ve never known a man worth his salt who in the long run, deep down in his heart, didn’t appreciate the grind, the discipline. There is something in good men that really yearns for discipline and the harsh reality of head-to-head combat.”

Embrace the grind and everyday challenges. Learn to love the daily routine of making yourself better. Championship teams put more emphasis on practice. They embrace the difficulties of the daily grind. Championships are won during these times.

Read

The final paragraph of his speech is the most important part for me. It sums up what it takes to be number one. Read it many times and let his words take hold of you.

“I don’t say these things because I believe in the “brute” nature of man or that men must be brutalized to be combative. I believe in God, and I believe in human decency. But I firmly believe that any man’s finest hour, his greatest fulfillment to all he holds dear, is that moment when he has to work his heart out in a good cause and he’s exhausted on the field of battle, victorious.”

Cites

https://unsplash.com/@sgc908

Persistence

In my last post, Success Doesn’t Wear a Watch, I talked about the WHY, and how your WHY HAS to be big and emotional. You have to dig down deep to pull out your WHY. Why do we want to do anything? Why did I want to start a new business doing something I’d never done before? At my age, why would I tackle something that I had no experience doing, or, I thought, that I had no skills to be good at it? I had to keep asking myself WHY, over and over again, until I found the answer. My answer came from deep down, it was emotional. I felt that millions of people could use my knowledge, experiences, and lessons that I have learned while traveling around the sun 59 times. That is my WHY. I will help millions of people to be happier, lead better lives, and pull out those gifts from God that everyone is born with. In turn, every person that I help will help millions of others. When I take my last trip around the sun, I will do it with a smile on my face knowing that I played this game of life and I have left it all out on the field. Persistence will get me there.

I have gotten to where I am and will get to where I’m going all because of one word, persistence. I just kept moving forward. You see, the journey to accomplishing your goals and being successful is not linear. It doesn’t happen in a straight line. You move up, then you stumble. You get back up, brush yourself off, and start off again. Some days I get out of bed and I feel so energetic that I don’t think my feet touched the ground all day and I take great leaps forward. On other days I move forward in smaller steps and there are a few days where my journey gets blocked and they make no progress. My journey to where I got to today has followed this path: set a goal; make a plan; work the plan; fail; learn; redirect my efforts; succeed. This path repeats the failures become less frequent, my learning increases, my plan becomes better, and I succeed. You will face a similar path on your journey to success. I believe the number one attribute that you need to have in order to succeed is persistence. You just have to continue to work on your plan persistently until you see small victories. If you are persistent and you will rejoice in your failures instead of using them as reasons to quit. You will start to look at failures as opportunities and you will learn from each failure. Take the lessons you learn, look at your plan, and rework it if necessary. Look deep inside yourself and make sure you are doing everything you need to be doing to succeed.

“Nothing in the world can take the place of persistence. Talent will not. Nothing is more common than unsuccessful men with talent. Genius will not. Unrewarded genius is almost a proverb. Education alone will not. The world is filled with educated derelicts. PERSISTENCE AND DETERMINATION ALONE ARE OMNIPOTENT.”

-Calvin Coolidge

Everyone who has ever accomplished anything has been persistent. Thomas Edison went through thousands of failed experiments before he invented the light bulb. Sir James Dyson went through over 5000 prototypes before he perfected his best-selling vacuum cleaner. Famous author, Stephen King’s first novel, Carrie, was rejected 30 times before it was published. King actually quit writing and threw the manuscript in the garbage. Luckily, his wife retrieved it and he persisted until he became a published author. We look at successful people as they are after they become successful. What we don’t see is what it took for them to succeed. If we could meet them before they are famous, then we would see they are no different than you and me. They were just persistent. They believed in their dream and they worked at it every day. They went through failures, just like us, they learned from them and kept going. If you’re WHY is big enough you will be persistent. You will do something, fail, learn, get up and keep moving forward. Be persistent in your daily activities until you succeed.

We went on an operation in the jungle to destroy a cocaine lab that was in a very remote place. The jungle was so thick that the helicopters couldn’t drop us off close to the alleged location of the lab. They hovered several feet above a cocoa field on the top of a ridge. We jumped out and headed down a very steep embankment. The ground was soft and it was hard to stay on our feet. When we got to the bottom of the ridge, we entered the thickest, darkest jungle I had seen. Everything you touched was wet and covered in insects. As we walked in a small stream, I placed my hand on a fallen tree to steady myself as I ducked under it. I immediately felt the burning sensation of thousands of ant bites. We searched for the lab for over an hour to no avail and realized that the informant had lied to us. We were all exhausted but still had to make the climb to the top of the ridge where the helicopters could pick us up. I had carried a lot of explosives in my bag that day and had planned on getting rid of them by blowing up the lab. Since there was no lab to use the explosives on,  I had to carry all that weight back up the ridge. As I climbed the ridge got steeper and at one point I was on my belly grabbing anything I could to pull myself a little higher. At one point I grabbed what I thought was a plant and begin pulling myself up. It wasn’t a plant, but a root that came out of the ground and jabbed me in the eye puncturing a hole in my eyelid. On top of being exhausted, I now had blood in one of my eyes and couldn’t see out of it. It was only through persistence that I made it to the top of the ridge and into the helicopter where I could get patched up.

Peru 1989

Be persistent every day in your journey. Don’t let anything distract you from obtaining your goals and work on your plan every day. Remember the path to success is not a straight line in, there will be road bumps along the way. If you fail, smile, remember your WHY, learn from your failure, and know you are close to your success. BE PERSISTENT.

inspirational-quotes-commitment-boxers

It’s About You

It’s not about me, it’s about you. I was asked the other day why I started writing a blog and didn’t really have an answer to that question. I’m not in my 20s and I’m not just starting out in life. I’m very comfortable and don’t need any extra income that can be generated from writing a blog. Heck, I have never really enjoyed writing in my entire life. I loved my career and enjoyed the majority of it. I loved to be out on the street and participating in operations, but I hated writing reports. We had five days to get our reports in after an operation and my bosses were constantly hounding me to do my reports. Just the thought of all the hours it would take to compile my notes and write a passable report would fill me with dread. One of the reasons I loved being in the jungle was because we didn’t have to do reports.

Photo by Suzy Hazelwood on Pexels.com

I started to think about the question and realized that it will really wasn’t my decision. The thought was placed into me by a higher power. I really didn’t have a choice or did I? I could’ve ignored the thoughts but throughout my life, I’ve realized that when you’re led to do something by a higher power, do it. There are terrific benefits to doing it and it’s something you’re supposed to do. I could estimate that throughout my life I have listened to a higher power 90 percent of the time and made good decisions. At the same time, 10 percent of the time I ignored what I was being told and made bad decisions.

It all started after I heard a speech where someone said that you could make money online. This got my attention because I like money, money is good and you can never have enough of it. I don’t ever want to stop earning money. There are so many great things I can do with money and so many people I can help. So after hearing that you can make money online, I began researching it and was told I needed to write a blog. At first, I hesitated because I’m not a writer and who would read my stuff? There was one thought in my mind that would not go away, It’s not about me, it’s about you. It’s about you, the 7.8 billion people in the world. If somebody can take away just one thing from one of my blog posts and it changes their life, then everything I do is justified.

Photo by Cameron Casey on Pexels.com

You have so much to give the world. Each and every one of you was born with your gifts to the world. Everybody has something inside of them that can help someone else. I believe it’s your obligation to pass your gift to others. My gift is motivation and people have told me that I say the right things at the right time and have helped people. If anyone has ever told you that you are good at something, that is your gift. We must continue spreading our gifts and never quit. When things get tough and you’re going through a difficult time, you have to find a way to reach down and fight through because someone, somewhere needs your gift. It’s not about you, it’s about them.

Get A Start On Your New Life Today. Limited Time Offer!

I will continue to talk to as many people as I can until my last breath. When things aren’t going well, I’ll keep going. When I’m talking and it seems like no one’s listening, I’ll keep talking. I’ll never quit, it’s just not in me. It’s not in you either. You might think so, but it’s not. When you think it is, get out of bed and go do it one more day. Do it the next day and the next until you’ve accomplished the mission. Everyone’s counting on you, so it’s your duty, your obligation to them to get it done. If you quit then you are letting down 7 .8 billion people. That’s a huge burden to have to live with for the rest of your life. Fight with all your being and when you feel you have nothing left in you, get up and take another swing. Whatever you do, never stop and keep moving forward.

Photo by Vek Labs on Unsplash

Life is hard and it will hit you. It will take you to your knees. Anyone who has gone through life without any kind of struggles hasn’t lived. So when it hits you, hit back, keep hitting back, keep moving forward. As long as you’re moving forward you’re winning, it doesn’t matter what the score is. There are too many people counting on you. It might hurt and it might be hard but you gotta keep moving forward. It’s not about you, it’s about them.

The warrior mentality and the ability to fight are in us all. It is there at birth. We are all fighters and a fighter is going to fight. They won’t quit until they’ve won or died. Nothing can stop them. Nothing can stop you. Once you know what you want, go out and get it. Don’t ever let anyone or anything stop you. You and only you are in control and determine whether you win or lose. You will have successes and you will have failures but you will never quit. You will fight and fight and fight until you win. It’s not about you, it’s about them.

Photo by Musa Ortau00e7 on Pexels.com

The 80/20 rule says that 20 percent of the people do 80 percent of the work. I was one of the 20 percent. It was ingrained in me in the military to accomplish the mission, that was the most important thing. Whenever one of my bosses needed something difficult done, they called on me because I always accomplished the mission, no matter how hard. I wouldn’t quit. You have to accomplish your mission and failure is not an option. You have been given a mission, whatever it may be and it is your duty to do what it takes to accomplish that mission and never quit. I won’t ever quit on you. When you win, then I win. I can’t succeed until you do. Keep fighting! It’s not about you, it’s about them.

Have you ever had to overcome adversity? Leave a comment and share your tips/techniques for fighting through when life is beating you down.

If you enjoyed this post, click on the little star and like it. Share it with others who might take away something from it.