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and dump the others on a siding somewhere when we’re
not.
But when basketball legend John Wooden’s father
said to him, “Make each day your masterpiece,” Wooden
knew something profound: Life is now.Life is not later
on. And the more we hypnotize ourselves into thinking
we have all the time in the world to do what we want to
do, the more we sleepwalk past life’s finest opportuni-
ties. Self-motivation flows from the importance we at-
tach to today.
John Wooden was the most successful college bas-
ketball coach of all time. His UCLA teams won 10 na-
tional championships in a 12-year time span. Wooden
created a major portion of his coaching and living phi-
losophy from one thought—a single sentence passed on
to him by his father when Wooden was a little boy—
“Make each day your masterpiece.”
While other coaches would try to gear their players
toward important games in the future, Wooden always
focused on today. His practice sessions at UCLA were
every bit as important as any championship game. In
his philosophy, there was no reason not to make today
the proudest day of your life. There was no reason not
to play as hard in practice as you do in a game. He
wanted every player to go to bed each night thinking,
“Today I was at my best.”
Most of us, however, don’t want it to be this way. If
someone asks us if today can be used as a model to judge
our entire life by, we would shriek, “On no! It isn’t one
of my better days. Give me a year or two and I’ll live a
day, I’m certain of it, that you can use to represent my
life.”
The key to personal transformation is in your will-
ingness to do very tiny things—but to do them today.