What is Your "Scorecard"?

Ah, yes, March of 2023 is in the record books.

How did you do? What is your scorecard?

What should our scorecard be?

I have always gravitated to John Wooden’s definition of success, given its simplicity and elegance:

“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 you are capable of becoming.” 

I always used to joke around and say things like, “If you set your goals low enough, you will always achieve them, and you will always feel good about yourself.” 

I said that kiddingly, but as I grow older, I have learned the merits of setting the right kind of goals, and having the right kind of measurements.

There are a million ways to measure ourselves. The worst of these is the way that we often find ourselves measuring ourselves – against other people. 

Don’t get me wrong, I am constantly measuring myself against others. But as I have gotten grayer (and hopefully wiser) I am more apt to comparing myself against others with regards to how they do things, versus what they have or what they own.

As Abe Lincoln said, “I learn from everybody, even if it’s sometimes what not to do.”

While my scorecard has varied over the years, it has evolved to these four questions:

• Am I growing physically?

• Am I growing mentally?

• Am I growing emotionally?

• Am I growing spiritually?

It may seem that these areas for growth could lead to frustration, and I am only setting myself up for failure. How am I, as I move closer to the age of 100, going to “grow physically”? Am I going to get taller? Am I going to attempt to break the four-minute mile? Am I going to add to my vertical leap? (If I doubled my vertical leap, it would move from 2 inches to 4 inches, and I would still fail to jump over a phone book. For anyone born after the year 2000 AD, you may Google “phone book” to know that to which I am referring).

I am not trying to constantly “top” myself. Gravity, entropy, and the laws of physics conspire to limit our ability to improve our physical capacity. But – Lord knows we can improve ourselves physically through exercise, a proper diet, and adequate sleep. And yes, we can continue to “grow” physically by improving in each of these areas.

How do you “grow mentally”?

It is not as hard as it looks!

Strive to learn continuously. Read voraciously, pay attention, take good notes, and work to understand the concepts of what you are reading. Be challenged by topics that you might not have had much exposure, but of which you are curious. For me, this recently entailed a book on the theologian Pierre Teilhard de Chardin. Wow – overlay his concept about the “noosphere” onto the world today, and see how you think about the universe and the existence of a higher being.

How am I to grow emotionally?

Well, there are two lines of thought here. One is to become more “emotionally mature”, i.e., having greater self control over my emotions as well as being more in touch with what I am experiencing emotionally. 

The other way to grow emotionally? Love more often and more deeply.

How are we to “grow spiritually”?

Each of us grows spiritually in our own way, at our own pace. To me, “growing spiritually” is about having an ever-deepening conviction of the existence of a higher being who innervates and energizes all things. And for me, to grow in that spirituality is to grow in the pursuit of knowledge of that one true God, from a foundation of faith.

So there you have it. There is my “scorecard” for whether or not I am achieving “success”.

I did not invent this concept. I borrowed it from a 1980 lecture at Davidson College by Dr. Jack Behrman, a professor of international business at the UNC Kenan-Flagler School of Business.

Do I have peace of mind that I did my best in March of 2023 to grow physically, mentally, emotionally, and spiritually?

Heck no!

Do the lessons learned from that scorecard inform how I will approach April of 2023?

Heck yeah!

Hey, “Thoughts for the Week” is designed to be interactive. I would love to hear from you. What is your scorecard? How do you measure yourself?