Team first…

Moments of team chemistry always remind me of the 300. Yeah, I know, I’ve got issues. Here’s an exerpt from the book Gates of Fire, by Steven Pressfield describing the secret sauce of Spartan chemistry. Check it out. The man nicknamed “Suicide” was just another teammate…

“When I first came to Lakedaemon and they called me ‘Suicide,’ I hated it. But in time I came to see its wisdom, unintentional as it was. For what can be more noble than to slay oneself? Not literally. Not with a blade in the guts. But to extinguish the selfish self within, that part which looks only to its own preservation, to save its own skin. That, I saw, was the victory you Spartans had gained over yourselves. That was the glue. It was what you had learned and it made me stay, to learn it too.

When a warrior fights not for himself, but for his brothers, when his most passionately sought goal is neither glory nor his own life’s preservation, but to spend his substance for them, his comrades, not to abandon them, not to prove unworthy of them, then his heart truly has achieved contempt for death, and with that he transcends himself and his actions touch the sublime. This is why the true warrior cannot speak of battle save to his brothers who have been there with him. This truth is too holy, too sacred, for words.”

Want a better team? Die to self. Give what you want from your teammates. Give without restriction or expectation of return. Give because you want to. Give. Not all of us can be the man, so to speak. Anybody on the team can be the glue. A “Team first” culture sounds great. It is. The problem? A few have to die – at least die to self. No harder death than the death from self centered/other controlling toward the life giving vibe that comes from CORE centered/self controlling. You ready to be the glue? You ready to die?

Live hard. Love harder…