This past Saturday I received a call from my friend, Fairfax Hackley, who was with Dan Gable at the Arnold Classic.
Coach Gable was just inducted into the Arnold Classic 2014 Hall of Fame as the “Greatest Olympic Wrestler and Coach in History.”
Fairfax mentioned to Coach Gable that we were good friends. Gable immediately tested to make sure.
“Can you call him right now and get him on the phone?” he asked.
“I can call him and if he doesn’t pick up he’ll call me back,” said Fairfax.
“Will he get back to you right away?” Gable asked.
“Yes, he’ll get back to me right away.”
Fairfax makes the call.
I don’t pick up because I’m with a friend. But I sense the urgency and excuse myself from the table. I call Fairfax back. He says, “I have
someone who’d like to speak to you.”
“Okay,” I reply.
The phone is transferred to someone else. He begins talking.
“Hello Matt,” he says. “How’s everything going?”
“Going great,” I reply.
“You still a kicking butt? You still a big shot?”
Long pause.
I know who this is, I think.
“Well, I’m not the type of person who’s going to refer to himself as a big shot,” i reply.
“But you’re doing okay, right?”
“Yes, we’re doing very okay.”
“Well, I’ve been watching you. You’re not an easy person to follow. Seems like you’re all over the place. And I want you to know that I have a different way of judging my athletes these days. I no longer judge them based upon what they did when they were with me. I judge them based on what they’ve done since they left.”
Pause.
“Do you know who this is yet?”
“Yes, I do?”
“Okay, who is it?”
“It’s Coach Gable.”
“Ah, very good. How’d you know?”
“I know because you’re still testing me. You were seeing if I’d take the bait and brag on myself.”
“Well, we still have some wrestlers who need to come back to earth. They’re still not there yet.”
[Coach Gable begins to name name’s and tell me, confidentially, whom he’s still watching in the hopes that he’ll get his act together.]
I listen.
We speak for a few more minutes. Coach Gable, true to the end, does not directly praise me in anyway. It’s not his style. He understands the harm it can do.
Yet, as a result of what he did say, I’m elevated once again. I want to do even better. Not for him, for myself. But knowing that my former
coach is still, in some ethereal way, pulling for me – and all his former athletes, that says a lot. Which means, he will never be a “former”
coach to me or anyone who ever was given the grace to work with him.
Yes. The “grace.”
The great novelist John Irving, once wrote that to be on the mat with Dan Gable was to be in touch with “grace.” Yes, that’s the word he
used.
To get a phone call from him, telling you how he’s still evaluating the talent he recruited, is as well.
In my newest product, Maxwell Maltz’s Theatre of the Mind, I tell many stories about Dan Gable and the influence he had upon me. From his visit to me in the hospital when my face was shattered, to him telling me I didn’t “try very hard” to his method of burning the past to create a vacuum for the future – it’s all in there. And then some.
If you haven’t already gotten this program, I suggest you do so NOW. It will give you the ONE SECRET to success that no one else is addressing. With it, you can do virtually anything. Without it, there isn’t a single self-develpment technique in the world that will help you.
Be Still – and Flow,
Matt Furey
P.S. Still think that thinking the wrong thoughts is no big deal, that negativity doesn’t matter. Well, look at this Dan Gable quote. Imagine being 181-0, and this is your very last match in college, for the NCAA title, and this is what you admit to thinking about it:
“All I worrried about was what (Owings) was doing to me, instead of what I was doing to him. When you start worrying about that stuff, you’re going down the wrong path.”
Want to stop worrying about the negative and bring forth the positive, then make sure you get your copy of Maxwell Maltz’s Theatre of the Mind right NOW.
