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August 2009 Newsletter: 30 years and counting: Wenger's magnificent obsession
This
Confidence newsletter is sent each month to subscribers of
www.yourmostconfidentself.com from Kate Burton and Brinley Platts,
the authors of "Building
Confidence for Dummies" and creators of the Your Most Confident Self
website.
Can soccer be art?
According to Arsène Wenger, the urbane French manager of Premiership club Arsenal, anything in life can be raised to an art form if it is done well enough. He said this last week, at his “30 years in football” pre-season press conference. The assembled soccer press was perplexed.
“If you read a great writer” explained Wenger, “he touches deep inside you and helps you to discover something about life.” He goes on to assert that human beings have the opportunity to transform every day into something close to art. Wenger’s chosen medium for his art is coaching talented young soccer players.
He is as passionate about his footballing art form as any conventional artist, living the life of an ascetic, obsessively pursuing soccer perfection. He believes that for every passion there is a great price to pay. There is something in the structure of your personality, he lectured the press, that tells you the obsession you have chosen is vital and is worth organising your whole life around. It becomes the core of your life.
The obsession you have chosen? This sounds remarkably like Viktor Frankl’s description in Man’s Search for Meaning of how your life purpose chooses you. Having a driving sense of purpose proved the crucial asset in the life and death struggles in the World War II death camps and North Atlantic convoys. A consistent, focused commitment to achieving something in life beyond your own comfort and survival is proven to help keep you healthy and vital in even the most difficult circumstances imaginable.
One suspects that Arsène Wenger (he is a French electrical engineering graduate with a Masters degree in economics, is fluent in English, German and Spanish with a smattering of Italian and Japanese), intelligent, charismatic and articulate as he is, could have created his art and succeeded in many fields; it happened to be football coaching.
Next month, on 17 September, I will be celebrating 30 years in my vocation: the professional and personal development of IT executives. I’m well known for this obsession within the industry but people who get to know me from outside that world sometimes struggle to understand why I would give so much of my life and energy to such a narrow and thankless objective.
The answer for me is easy. I didn’t choose it, it chose me. Back in the 1970s I saw how fast computers and telecommunications were changing the world and decided that I must play my part in developing the professionalism and leadership that would be so essential in harnessing the rampant technology and channelling it for positive, peaceful purposes. So far this is working, but with the future of our world in the balance I’m with Wenger and I’m not going to take my eye off the ball just yet.
It’s 30 years and counting; there’s still all to play for.
Do you believe that life works better with a magnificent obsession? We’d love to hear about yours and will publish them on the web site if you give us permission.
Brinley & Kate
Kate’s new "Neuro-Linguistic Programming Workbook for Dummies" by Romilla Ready and Kate Burton ISBN 9780 470 51973 8 is now out on Amazon and in good bookstores. It’s the sequel to "Neuro-Linguistic Programming for Dummies" by Romilla Ready and Kate Burton ISBN 0764570285
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