What's your next play?
Back in May, I had the opportunity to hear Shane Battier speak. He’s a basketball player who played for Duke in college and won two NBA championships with the Miami Heat. His talk was thought provoking.
While there were many inspirational points to take away, one that stuck with me was “next play.”
At Duke, Battier played for legendary coach Mike Krzyzewski. This was one of the coach’s core mantras: next play. Battier shared how out on the basketball court after a play had gone south or gone well the focus always became the next play. You can’t do anything about the past. One’s focus needs to shift to what’s next.
One thing I advocate with Sustainable Ambition is to always be in action on exploring a curiosity. This isn’t to be busy for busy sake. This is to help you plan for transitions that you don’t see coming. It’s to help you continually learn about yourself and understand what might be next for you. What fits you next? It’s to remain on a growth curve and continue to build your identity capital. It’s to help you take control of your personal narrative and start to shape it with intention.
I was recently with a client who made this very point. She shared how she’s learned her lesson to never again wait and stay in a role in which she had lost interest and was no longer on a growth curve. She didn’t realize she could be proactive and change her situation and trajectory. Yet at some point, she got into action. She followed her curiosity, which led her to take an executive course at Harvard, and she started to speak up and seek out a new role. In doing so, it’s led her to landing a cool, new position that she is pumped about. She’s regenerated her ambition, and she’s learned that she’s never going to settle in again. She knows now that she's in choice and in control of her own fate. She now will say—next play.
What’s your next play? What curiosity is pulling at your attention? What might be a new work adventure you want to explore? What might be your next career arc?
Let’s go! Next play.
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