The Jordan Harbinger Show - 43: George Raveling | Coaching to Win the Championship of Life

Episode Date: May 17, 2018

Coach George Raveling (@GeorgeRaveling) is a pioneer in transcending the intersections of sports, culture, race, and business. He is also the author of War On The Boards: A Rebounding Manual. What We Discuss with George Raveling: George's process for planning every day with intentionality and strategy. Why, even at age 80, George reinvents himself every five years. The best place to start with disruption. What sets apart great athletes and other high performers from the rest of the crowd. George's three fundamental responsibilities: to coach attitude, behavior, and performance. And much more... Sign up for Six-Minute Networking -- our free networking and relationship development mini course -- at jordanharbinger.com/course!  Like this show? Please leave us a review here -- even one sentence helps! Consider including your Twitter handle so we can thank you personally! Full show notes and resources can be found here.See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

When I get up in the morning, the first thing I do is sit on the side of the bed and I give myself these two choices. And these are only two choices that I've had. And I've been doing this for 40 years. And the two choices are you can either be happy or you can be very happy. And so you've got to select one of those too. But that's it. There's no other choice. Welcome to the show.

I'm Jordan Harbinger. And as always, I'm here with my producer, Jason DePhilippo. On this episode, we're talking with my friend George Ravelling. This guy, one of the most well-known and beloved figures in the sports world, former basketball coach, former Nike Global Basketball Sports Marketing Director, but that does not do him justice. George is inspiring. He's interesting.

He's just, everything about him just makes you want to be a better person. He's the first African-American basketball coach in the Pack 8, now the Pac-12. He traveled a six out of seven continents. He's referenced by many as the Human Google, which doesn't surprise me, because I think it reads at least four books a month. He's given away thousands of books. He showed up to the studio with books. He spoke before Congress.

Oh, no, did I mention he's 80 and still going after it as hard as ever? I find George, like I said, so, so inspiring. He's really living his mission. George plans every day with intentionality and strategy. We're going to go through his process for this and why it's been so pivotal in his life. We'll also learn why he reinvents himself every five years. I've never met anyone at his age, especially, who is so good at him. staying relevant. George has some amazing wisdom and stories that are just going to blow you away.

So don't judge this book by the cover if you think you're not into sports or you don't really, it's not going to be like that. Trust me. Without further ado, here's my good friend, Coach George Ravelling. I'm curious, I asked why, if you were left-handed, because you have your watch on your right wrist like I do, but I do it because I'm left-handed. But you say, oh, it's one of many contrarian things that I do. So what's going on there? When I was a college student, I noticed that one tended to like the same things, do the same things, go to same places. And I always felt that I wanted to be a contrary and do some things in my life that were unique to me. So I've never worn my watch on the left, even though I understand the logic of it.

I can still remember when I was growing up. At the time, I go up in Washington, D.C. and it was about 73% black at that time. And so there were certain cultural references. And one, if you had a Cadillac, that was a status symbol in our community. And so I always thought, if I grow up, I'll never drive a Cadillac. I'll define my success some other way. And it probably won't be based on material.

things in that, not that there was anything wrong with that. And so when I got to the University of Iowa, you got a courtesy car. And they asked me if I wanted to Cadillac, and I told him that was the last thing I wanted. And so I ended up driving a Chevy. So I tried to search for things that will take me off the highways of life into the side roads. And so this just happens to be one of them. I tend to be more of a person. When everybody's going right, I tend to go left. It affords me a different type of opportunity. I think it affords me a different way to think. And so now I've lived long enough to live in a social system that's basically being governed by disruptive actions and thinking and behaviors. So, yeah, you're kind of the original disruptor, right? So instead of

trying to disrupt a whole industry, you start one step at a time. Look, I'll just wear my watch on the other hand. That's the best place to start with disruption is with yourself. So it seems, and you do a lot of this stuff, even now, that you're always looking for different sorts of ways to stay relevant. I'm going to get into that in a bit, but it seems like you had a bit of a rough early childhood maybe. You had your father pass away when you were really young, and I wanted to explore that a little bit because it seems like it would have been really. really easy for you to get in trouble a lot instead of becoming a successful person. That's an interesting perspective. But when I was nine, my dad died. My dad was a horse racing.

He worked at Delaware Racetrack, and he was a groom, and he died when I was nine. And when I was 13, my mom had a nervous breakdown. Had to be institutionalized for the rest of her life. So now the question becomes, what do you do with George? And so my grandmother, who was really the boss of the family, nothing in our family was ever done without my grandma's permission, despite the fact that she never even graduated from high school, but she had great common sense. And so my grandma worked for a wealthy white family in Georgetown, and so she was telling the lady the house this dilemma that she had, did she have any advice as to what to do with me? And so the lady's daughter worked for the Catholic charities. And

And so she told her daughter about it, and her daughter said, well, I think I can get him in a Catholic boarding school up in Pennsylvania and through the Catholic Charities. And so that's what happened. They got me into this Catholic boarding school called St. Michael's that's in Holbein Heights, Pennsylvania. And so I did all the rest of my formal education at St. Michael's. And the teachers were all nuns and the priests were the upper administration. and it was very strict. And part of the responsibilities for each person, you had to take on chores. So during the time I was there, I did everything from clean out chicken coops to milk cows,

the bale hay to pick apples, and scrub the chapel floors, work in the bakery in the kitchen, make beds. And so by the time I reached a senior, my senior in high school, I had a lot of domestic skills. And I also came up in a very disciplined environment. And so I really never had an opportunity to be tempted by those typical things that happen in neighborhoods, be they black or white. You only got to go home for three weeks during the summer. and it didn't take long to figure out the best way to get off of campus was to participate in sports. So I started, we only had four sports.

We had boxing, baseball, basketball, and football. So I went out for everyone. Every single sport? Yes. And I actually boxed into Golden Gloves. So, but the sport that I ended up being the best in was basketball. So between my eighth and ninth grade year, that summer, I grew full. four inches in one year. And so I popped up to six four. And if for no other reasons,

in my height advantage, I like basketball the best. And so I started to get better and better. The end of my junior year in high school, I can remember waiting for the Greyhound bus to go back to D.C. for a couple weeks. And I can remember thinking to myself, God, if I can just graduate next year and become a pilot in the Air Force, I'll have it made. And so that was my, vision. I had never heard of a scholarship. I had no idea that you could go to college and have your education paid for by participating in basketball. So you never even, did you plan to go to college or you just know I'll just go to the Air Force? And I don't mean this in a mean spirited way or that I was victim of my parents or anything like that. No one in my family

ever graduated from high school. So why would someone in my family think that George is going to go to go to college. It was unthought of. And so until my senior year, I'll never forget it, we're playing a team called St. Rosa Carbondale, and I had a real high-scoring game. And afterwards, when I came out of the locker room, someone came up to me, a man came up to me, and he says, I'd like to introduce myself. And he says, hi, my name's Jack Ramsey. I'm the coach at St. Joe's.

And he handed me his business card. And so he said he'd like to offer me a scholarship. Well, I had no comprehension of what a scholarship was. And so on the way back on the school bus, my coach said to me, who was that guy you were talking to outside the locker room? And I said, I handed him a card. I said, it was a coach, a college coach. And so he said, what did he say to you?

I said he was going to offer me a scholarship. And my coach was a little startled. And so I said, coach, what's a scholarship? So he explained it to me. And subsequently as a season, on, I ended up getting a variety of other offers. And essentially, I probably would have gone to Michigan State, but because it was a Catholic school and nuns were influencing me, there was no way. I was going to go to St. Joe or Villanova. And so I went down for the visit at

Villanova, and they offered me a scholarship right while I was there. In those days, you didn't have SAT and PSATs. So, or ACT, so you had to take an exam right there on campus. So I took the exam, and then that's, I took that on a Friday night. And on Sunday, they offered me a scholarship and said that I gained admission. So when I first picked up a basketball, I had no idea that this was going to be a transformative mechanism for me and changed my life forever. But it's a long-winded answer to how did I avoid getting in trouble. Not that I didn't get in trouble sometimes around school, but you didn't want to get in trouble around there because you had extra chores to do or teachers would make you stay afterwards and do different assignments.

So I grew up in a pretty disciplined environment. It seems like you took that discipline with you pretty much for the rest of your life. I mean, you've done a lot. And you've been a coach, a mentor to a lot of people. and I was talking with my wife in the car on the way here, and she said, you know, a lot of elite athletes have coaches, but a lot of other high-performing people or just regular Joe's, they don't have coaches, they don't necessarily think about getting coaches. Why do you think about, what do you think it is that a lot of people who aren't athletes, they almost tend to devalue coaching and mentorship? Have you noticed that? I think that a lot of it is based on trust.

at the core of all authentic relationships in my mind is trust. I think two ingredients have to happen. One, you have to trust a person. You have to respect the person. So coming out of a strict Catholic educational background, and even when I go back to the lessons my grandma taught me, was you always respected adults. You listen to what they had to say.

and when I was going up as a child, there was this mantra that children were to be seen and not heard. Well, clearly, that wouldn't work in today's society. But what it did when I look back on it now, it forced you to have to be a better listener because if the two most important ingredients in the conversation is speaking and listening, and so it forced me to acquire better listening skills and also to accept discipline And so as I came along, I think that perhaps the best thing that happened to me was I learned to be an active listener and to listen to understand because that was the only way I could participate in a conversation. You never quit, the nuns were like the Pope. Whatever they said was infallible.

So I had to listen keenly because if they told me to do something, I knew chances were I wasn't going to be happy with the results if I didn't listen. I can imagine, yeah, I can imagine that kind of environment. I mean, I've only seen it in movies, but there's a reason those stereotypes with the nuns and the rulers and everything exist in the first place. It carried on at Villanobo. When I went to Villanova, 56 to 60, you were not allowed to attend class or eat in the dining hall if you didn't have a coat and tie on. And the way they did roll call, you set by alphabet. So, but so everyone would have a sport jacket and khaki pants, most of the students, and you

get a clip on bow tie. So it was right before you went in class, you clipped a bow tie on afterwards, you take it back off and the same thing in the dining hall. So my life was pretty much regimented. There were innate values that were instilled in me that probably still reside inside of me to this very, very day. So you bring up a great thought for me. I have never gone back and really reexamine what are the things that led me to be the person I am.

But clearly the discipline and the ability to listen has been a huge factor for me. Yeah, I can imagine. Enforcing that listening through discipline in the first place seems like it would definitely have to be effective after a while. I can just imagine everybody walking around with a clip-on bow tie in their pocket and then, oh, hold on, let me throw that on there and then running in. And it's almost sounds like sort of a military-ish environment with the level of discipline everyone had. So if you didn't have a tie, you just didn't eat. Is that what happened? No, yeah.

If you didn't have a tie, you couldn't get in the dying hall. Or sometimes if someone would forget, someone would be coming out and you'd say, hey, can I borrow your tie? I'll give it back to you afterwards. But it was, there was just no getting around. I've read that you consider yourself more an educator than a coach, or at least as much an educator as a coach. What's the distinction between those two things in your mind? I tried to separate the two, so I would be constantly reminded that I have to contribute to those young men that I coached over the years more than teaching them how to win and lose an athletic contest, but to teach them more importantly how to win and win in an athletic contest, but to teach them more importantly how to win and the game of life. And I would tell all of them when I was recruiting them, if the only thing you

learned from the four years is how to shoot a jump shot, play defense, rebound, and win basketball games, you could have gone anywhere in the country and achieved that. If you come and we partner up for four years, I wanted to be a unique experience. I wanted to be more than about basketball. I wanted to be more about winning and losing. And so I tried to create a, to create a an environment that would allow me to see that I had a broader responsibility to each of these young people than winning and losing basketball games. I remember I was recruiting a kid. This is when I was coaching at USC, and his name was Mark Boyd.

He was the only player I've ever coached that started every game for four years. And I remember walking out of his house after signing the letter of intent, getting a letter of intent signed by him. His mom walked me to the door as a single parent, and she looked at me and she said, Coach Ravlin, I don't want no foolishness out of you now. And I knew what she was saying. Hey, I'm giving you my most prized possession in the whole world. And I'm going to send you a boy, and I expect you to send me back a man, and I expect you to respect the values that I've instilled in him.

And so those type of moments help me understand in a more vivid manner. or what my ultimate responsibilities were to those young people. And like, for example, everywhere I coached before practice, I would always have a five-minute talk with the team about something that had nothing to do with basketball. I'd always pass out little articles for them to read. And so I wanted this to be a memorable opportunity for them. I have one player who told me a couple years ago, he said, coach, he said, somewhere in my garage, I have every handout you gave out in the first.

four years of practice. Wow. And so I can look back and feel good about the relationship I had with my players in that I tried to fulfill the mission that each parent or a relative bestowed on me. And that was to take a young person and help them integrate themselves into society as adults and become responsible adults. Do you see people getting less of that now? Or do you think that it's just happening in a different way? A different way in this manner. I think that the unique opportunity to help a young person, take them by the hands and walk them along the paths of life.

And as my grandma said, I know where all the potholes in life are, and if you listen to me, I can help you avoid some of them. The thing that worries me so much today is that, from a basketball standpoint, particularly, is I think we've lost our sense of responsibility to the whole person. I think we spend too much time allowing kids to feel that the greatest values are our money and material and collecting things. To me, I think the greatest value that you can contribute to a young person's life

is to help them understand the relevance of education. And I have a huge problem with one and done because I think it devalues education. There's no question that they're good enough athletically, but there's an athletic component. There's a spiritual component. And there's an educational component. And so much of the talk today evolves around getting to a higher level and making large sums of money. I always told the players making money is the easiest part. Keeping it and multiplying is a difficult part.

And so I worry today if historians aren't going to treat adults harshly because we did not embrace the opportunity we had to give young people a balanced perspective about the future in their lives and their participation in the future. You're still mentoring people. I mean, there's two guys sitting behind me here who, I assume if I ask them, they would say that you have some measure of influence in their lives. This is still important to you even now. Well, because I look back at all the people in my life who contributed to me, who saw something to me when I didn't see it in myself, people who taught me of important life lessons, people who took me by the hand and introduced me the aspects of life

that I would have never done on my own. So at 80 years old, you arrive at a point where you say, you know, I've had my day in the sun. I've been, I had a chance to get to the mountain top. It's no longer can be about me. It's got to be about other people. And so I just use the same simple format that helped me get through life. And that was other people. And so the life lessons I've learned, I try to share.

I remember in a sociology class one time a professor said, nothing in life is of any value unless you can share it with others. And so I try as hard as I can do to be a servant leader. And in the early days, I had no knowledge of servant leadership. It wasn't a connotation I was familiar with. But I just tried to follow the success formulas that had worked for me in my life. and try to share with other people. Hardly a day ever goes by when I don't hear my grandmother say it in the background

that if you listen to me, I can help you avoid the potholes of life because I know where they are. I think that makes a lot of sense. Although getting younger people, even people in my own age, I'm 38, even getting people like me to listen can be its own challenge, I would imagine. Do you look for people who are going to be better at listeners? Like, are these two guys just better at paying attention? Or do you pick somebody in whom you see potential and you get it through to them somehow, some way? I don't know that I really have chosen anyone and said, I want to mentor that person.

I think they probably have chose me. With one of the young men, Kamadi Ramsey, who's in the studio, it really was an assignment from my wife. She came home one night with the school newspaper from Santa Monica, and there was an article about it, And she said, I want you to read this. And I read it. And I said, okay, I got it. So why did you ask me to read it? And she said, because you should mentor him.

He wants to be somebody in life. And a lot of young people have no idea. He knows what he wants to do in life. And you should mentor him and help him get where it is that he wants to go. So I use that as an overt example of people choose. In that case, he didn't really choose me. But in most cases, it's been someone else who's who through a relationship or they walked into my life or maybe I just

observed them and said with a little tinkering here or there, this person could really be special. And I think all of us can be special in life. But most of us don't, don't see ourselves as unique human beings. And we get caught up on all these labels that people put on you. And the other young man, I had a recent opportunity to hire someone else to work with me. And it was an intern position. And the more as I prepared to do the interviewing, the more I realized that the first thing that I had to do was drop the connotation intern. Because intern puts a lot of fences around a person.

For example, if you're familiar with the king and I, if you're going to play the part of the king, you'd have to be ball-headed. And so if you're an intern, then you try to play the part of an intern. And so it puts fences around you, doesn't allow for someone to reach their outer limits. And so as I said to Nick, I said, look, this is not going to be an intern position. You can make this job anything you want it to be. You can have whatever title you want. But what I want to do is to give you the freedom to grow and for us to be able to work together. And so what I thought was important to take down all the fences, take the label off and let him take this job and craft it to his skill set in that.

And so I've learned a great lesson about labels that have put on people. To me, the labels, once you put it on, you become a prisoner of that label. And so I felt to get the very best out of him, I had to give him the freedom to be who he was, not who, Coach Rav wants him to be, but who he wants to be and still excel. You've worked with thousands of elite athletes over the years. So what do you find are some of the most beneficial or useful habits that these people have cultivated, or daily rituals or particular types of things that these people have done each day to get better? Have you seen something dramatically pay off that you can sort of trace a line through these guys?

Well, let's use Michael Jordan as an example. I was the assistant coach of the U.S. Olympic team twice in 1984. The Olympics were in Los Angeles, and Bob Knight was the head coach. And in 88, I was the assistant coach to the United States Olympic basketball team. John Thompson was the coach, and the Olympics were in Korea. So I kindle a relationship with Michael Jordan that we still share to this day. And so Michael came to me shortly after he was a rookie in the NBA and asked me if I'd run a basketball camp for him. And I said, yes.

And so that gave me an opportunity to over 23 years to really get to see a basketball icon, or probably an icon in all respects of life. The things that I noticed about a great athlete is they're unused. passion to excel, that their discipline, they're immensely hard workers. I'll tell you an interesting story that happened at Michael's basketball camp. And each session he would do a lecture on offensive basketball, and then he would conclude he'd pick a couple young people out from the camp and say, play me one-on-one. And if you beat me one-on-one, you'll get a lifetime supply of Jordan Brand

products. So kids would go out. Great deal, yeah. So this one year the kid gets off to a good start and he's up 2-0. And so now Michael gets, he starts backing him down in the post and until he gets it tied up so he backs him down like a pro guy and then he scores. And then finally he takes a three-point shot and it goes in and he wins and the camp's booing and everything. And so I'm driving him back to the hotel and I said, M-J, let me ask you a question. I said, I said, why didn't you like that kid win. He said, why would I let him? I said, kids 12 years old. You'll make his day. He said, that's just the point, coach. He said, he said, no one in the world will ever be able to say that they beat Michael Jordan a 101. He says, yeah. So now he's 12 years old. For the rest of his life,

he's going to hang his banner on. I beat Michael Jordan one on one. It ain't happening. And so they're unusually competitive and they're great students of the game. Honestly, they're easier to coach than you think they are. They're opinionated. They're stubborn. They want to step out outside the rules. But at the end of the day, it's not about teaching them about basketball. I think you have three fundamental responsibilities as a coach. You coach behavior, you coach attitude, and you coach performance. All the X and O stuff is not anywhere as important. If you can manage a person's attitude, you can manage their behavior and their performance, then you're going to be successful and have a great relationship with them. But the great ones, you hear coaches say, I coach all my players alike.

I don't believe that. I think that you have to craft a strategy to get the best out. And the great ones, sometimes you have to just throw rules to the win or make them up along the way. But a guy like, God bless him, he's hopefully in heaven, Dean Smith. But one big criticism about Dean Smith when Michael played at Carolina was, Dean was the only guy to hold Michael under 20. And so sometimes the system of play restricts a great player from reaching their outer limits. So I've always felt the great ones, you have to be more tolerant,

and you have to take down the fences and allow them to pursue their own. outer limits. You've met a lot of brilliant and inspiring people. Like you mentioned, Michael Jordan, even Harry Truman, Martin Luther King comes to mind. In fact, I think that's how we were introduced through one of those stories. What are some of the practices or wisdom that you've seen from them? You know, the athletes, they teach us one set of habits, discipline, performance, and things like that. What are you seeing from some of these other folks that you can share with us? Well, let's take the two vivid examples that you lobbed up, President Truman. and Martin Luther King.

I'm not sure any president in the history of the United States other than perhaps Abraham Lincoln had to execute and render a more difficult decision than President Truman, because if we go back, he okayed the dropping of an atomic bomb on Japan. And that had to be just an absolutely, and I'll use this term, advisedly a horrible decision to make for him. This is the lives that are going to be affected by this. And so I'm sure he grappled with it before he made the decision, doing the decision and afterwards.

But he was a courageous enough leader to make a difficult decision. The same thing with King. The thing that fascinates me about Reverend King was he did all this between the age 26 and 39. And so he accomplished an awful lot. And in many cases, things that he would have been much happier just being a pastor of the church. Harry Truman would have been much happier back in his family clothing store. But there comes a time when a touch comes from somewhere out. there in the great vista and it's your moment and you have to make a difficult

decision and most difficult decisions are made by courageous leaders that understand at the end of the day I'm gonna get a lot of criticism at the end of the day this might be a mistake but I have to utilize my best judgment at this moment in King's case I'll always remember something that he said if a man or woman hasn't found something in life that they're willing to to die for it, then perhaps they're not fit to live. And so he felt so deeply about his responsibilities that he was willing to put his life on the line for it.

And I think about that often, how would I react if I knew the ultimate crisis I might have to give up my life for it? So to me, both of those people were, they were visionaries, they were courageous leaders, they were willing to take society from where it was to where it should be in the future. Truman, I wish I had got to know him better. I was just a chance circumstance that I got to meet him in Independence, Missouri, when my senior year at Villeneuve, I played an East West All-Star game that was in Kansas City. And they took us out to Independence, Missouri, to meet President Truman.

And I always remember his office was a replica of the Oval Office. And so when we walked in, I noticed to the right there were a couple long tables with books stacked up on him. And so after he spoke with us and took pictures with us on the way out, he gave us a two set of books that was a volume on his presidency. And then when I got back to the hotel, I opened them up and I noticed that they were personally autographed. I room with the guy named Johnny Cox, who was a great player at Kentucky. And so I said, Johnny, open your books. And it says in there to George Rowling from Harry S. Truman, and it has the date in there. And so I still have those books to this day.

But the connection that between King and Truman was that when I was able to get the original copy of the I Have a Dream speech during the March on Washington, And I put it inside of that book because I knew I'd never throw those books away. Good idea. Because how many people can say they have a personally autographed book from one of the presidents of the United States. And so that was my vault. And now the speech is in a vault. But in those days, the vault was inside the King, I mean inside the Truman books. Yeah, I want to get that story in a little bit.

I'm glad to hear the speeches in a vault. I was worried maybe it was under a couch cushion somewhere. the house. You say that you plan every day with intentionality or strategy. Is that an actual process that you, do you write this down? Do you have some sort of formula for this? Or do you just wake up and think today I'm going to get something done? I have it written on a tablet and in my mind is when I get up in the morning, the first thing I do is sit on the side of the bed and I give myself these two choices. And these are only two choices that I've had. I've been doing this for 40 years.

And the two choices are you can either be happy or you can be very happy. And so you've got to select one of those two. But that's it. There's no other choice. And so then the next thing that I do is that I try to plan out my day. And so my day really evolves around three or four things, energy management, time management, environmental management, and productivity. And so what I try to do is to plan my day out, and now I only will focus on four things per day.

And it comes down to something that one of the presidents at Nike said many years ago, he's at a leadership meeting. He said to us, would we be better off doing 25 things good or would be better off doing five things great? And so I try to declutter today and say, okay, if I can get these four things done today and they fit in the framework of energy management, time management, environmental management, and productivity, the productivity is the byproduct of the first three. And so that's pretty much how I govern my day every day. and I try to make sure that sometime during that day that I have an hour of think time where I can just sit and have a deep, rich, constructive conversation with myself. I think the most important conversations that we can have on a daily basis are the conversations that we have with ourselves.

But we can get trapped into all these clutter of things to do, and we go through a 20, 24 hours and we never had a real conversation with ourselves. And so what I've found is it's helped me in so many ways. If I can just sit somewhere for an hour and think with a pad and a piece of paper, because as I've gotten older now, my memory's not as good. So I try to write down things. And even reading books, I destroy the books because I had notes written all over the pages. And I finally realized about six months ago that all these books have four to five empty pages.

It might be in the beginning or the end. So I go back and put notes on those and so forth. If you simplify your day, you know, if you break the day down to 80, it comes out to 86,400 seconds. So at the end of the day, when you go to bed, the fundamental question I ask myself, What did I do today to make myself a better person than I was yesterday? And if I had 86,400 seconds, and I have to say to myself that I didn't do anything to make myself a better person than I was yesterday, then shame on me. I just blew a golden opportunity to grow as a person and to contribute as a person. When you're having those conversations with yourself, what are you thinking about?

What are you writing about? How do you pick the subject? Did you just sit down and something pops into your head or you usually have a plan in advance? No, it usually things pop into my head and I think about. Yesterday I was having a conversation with myself about habits. And so I started to write down bad habits that I have, good habits that I have, and habits that I need to have but don't have. And so then I try to build a strategy around those things.

Most of the conversations I have are at least 95. percent positive. If I get into conversation with myself and I can feel that it's being negative, then I immediately come to a stop and try to as quickly as possible get out of that negative conversation into a positive conversation. So as a result, I don't spend a lot of time focusing on being happy because I'm happy every day. Some days I'm just more happy than others.

And when you get to be 80 years, oh, you're just happy if you wake up in the morning and you can go to the bathroom. But it takes a certain discipline. But what I've really come to understand is how much of a control we have over our lives. It just takes courage to take our life back from society. What do you mean by that, to take your life back from society? I notice on your website it reads, the hardest battle one has to fight is to live in a world where every single day someone is trying to make. you a person you do not want to be. When I reflect on my 80-year journey, a large part of my life was determined by other people's expectations, opinions, and validation. If I had to do it all

over again, I would be far more mindful of controlling my own destiny and taking back my life. What do you mean take back your life? Just take labels. People put labels on you, and then the minute there's labels on you, they put fences around you. We're dealt huge every day with with ads, values. Someone every day is trying to get us to do something that we don't want to do, to buy something that we don't want to buy, to go someplace we don't want to go, to eat something that we don't want to eat or don't know that we shouldn't be eating it. And so I think that there's this universe called me, and then there's this broader universe called the world. So the world puts its values and its rules and regulations on us. But it's a world,

In this world call me, I control that community. For example, I live in Ladera Heights, but basically it's in Los Angeles. So there's this inner me, and I can control what I read, what I eat, what I can make my own rules. I can decide who's going to be a part of my life, who's not going to be part of my life. I can set the path forward for myself. Not someone else telling me how to get to the future or not someone else telling me this is the way to do it. And what I found is once you take control of your life, your thought process is changed. And you're in control of the decisions.

It's not someone or the people in your relationship circle whose expectations are you should do this, you should do that. Because if you have a broader enough relationship circle, you'll be spending every day trying to meet other people's expectations and their validations. to me, the most important validation is what does George think of George? It's not what do all my friends think of me. And when you get into that mindset, you also start to understand that you're nowhere as good as people think that you are. Here I am 80 years old right now, and I'm trying to figure out what it is that I don't know but need to know so that I can stay relevant in this ever-changing world. I was in Philadelphia a few weeks ago and I went to University Penn Bookstore and I decided,

okay, on this trip, I'm only going to buy books about the future. Everybody's talking about the future. So I'm trying to learn what the future is going to look like and what are the skillsets that I'm going to have to have to remain relevant in this ever-changing world. But the choice is we either create a path forward or someone else is going to create it for you. Do you have your hands on the steering wheel of your life or is someone else steering your life for you? And I just feel like that I spend a whole lot of time with false values, accumulating money,

material things, collecting things, trying to be popular with people. And at the end of the day, I realize that the price I have to pay to do that is not worth it. Well, I have to figure out who am I, who am I really, and why am I on earth and what can I contribute? I think those are the three most relevant questions everybody has to grapple with in their life. Who am I? Not who everybody else tries to make me be or think I am, but who am I? Why am I on earth?

What is that I have to contribute in life? And so I just wish when I was much younger, I realized these things because I would have spent a hell of a lot less unclosed and collectible, all these things that everybody thinks is important, that at some point in your life you'll come to realize it's not about all the toys we collect and all the money we make and that. It's really about what a lasting legacy, a positive legacy, am I going to leave when I pass by? Did I spend my life trying to help other people become better? Did I spend my life in search of who I am instead of who somebody else wants me to be? I've never met anyone of your age who's as good at staying relevant as you.

You're on Twitter, Instagram. I don't know. Are these guys just doing it? Okay. That's the secret. Well, it comes down to if you know me, but you don't know me as well as you could. And one of the things that you'd come to a conclusion is I never see Coach Rav around people his own age. I do that on purpose.

I have friends my own age, but I don't spend much time with them because if I spend time with people my own age, I'm going to be residing in the past. I don't want to talk about UCLA. I don't want to talk about Washington State. And so the people who understand where the world is going are young people. And I find out that young people are my best mentors right now. I can go to them and ask them questions. And while they think I'm mentoring them, they're mentoring me too.

It's a shared relationship. And so I spend as much time as I can around young people because there's a certain naivness about them. They think they know a hell of a lot more than they do. But I listen to them and probably 50, 60 percent of the time they're right. the one thing I disciplined myself to do in the last 10 or 12 years is to ask them their opinion and respect their opinion. It doesn't mean that I have to agree with it, but the two young men that work with me, I asked them for their opinion and I respect their opinion.

And a lot of times what will end up happening, I'll say, damn, I didn't think about that. Or they'll give me a different perspective or a different evaluation. platform. So to me, at 80 years old, you're going to see me hanging around with all the young dudes I can. Now, I'm not into the rap. I'm not into a lot of things that they find entertaining, but what I am into is their head and their intellect, because they're teaching me a lot. I heard that you reinvent yourself every five years. What's going on with that? Why? Why bother doing that? I have this theory that every 10 years, we have to reinvent ourselves. So, At 80 years old, I'm not the same George Ravling I was when I was 60 years old.

Society dictates change. Your age dictates change your interests. And so what I do is I take the 10-year increment and I divide it into two five-year quadrants. And so right now I'm at 80. And so I have a strategic plan for personal growth over the next five years. That'll take me to 85. If you listen to the insurance actuaries, they say that the average American will live to be 89. So if I hit the lottery and I get lucky, so I get through this, I'll be 85.

So then I'll plan it out from 85 to 90. I feel it gives me a distinct advantage because less than 5% of the people on this earth live their life strategically. And so I have a personal growth plan for myself for the next five years on things that I want to achieve over the course of the next five years. If I were leaving today to go to San Diego, I would have to map out at least in my mind. I know we have GPS, but in my mind, how am I going to get to San Diego? And am I going to fly? Am I going to drive? And then what am I going to do when I get there?

So what I find amazing about people is we spend more time planning our vacation than we do plan in our lives. When we're going to go? Who's going to go? How much is it going to cost? Where are we going to go? All these things. We'll spend hours planning out our vacation, but we won't spend that same amount of time planning out our lives. And I think those people who live their lives strategically, their personal life strategically, I think have a huge advantage over the rest of the population.

because most people just live. They get up every day and they just go through life living. But to me, I want to live a life of fulfillment. So what's the next reinvention for you? Do you have kind of ideas on what you want to achieve in the next five or ten years? The next five or ten years, I want to be the most enlightened 80-year-old on the planet on how to get to the future first. and what role does AI, robotics, all these things play? Because five years from now, I think there's going to have to be this marriage between the human and the machine.

We're headed toward the AI is going to take us there. So how does the human and the machine work together in a collaborative manner to create a better society? So I'm trying to learn how I can still remain relevant in this new technological society. It seems like it would be really easy to say, forget it, I'm 80. I don't need to be relevant anymore. I can just. The minute I say that, I will be irrelevant. Yeah, I guess you have a point.

There's so much more that I have to learn. There's so many mistakes that I made that I, thank God, I've lived long enough to be able to understand. And one, I made a mistake in judgment and then try to go back and correct those mistakes. But if there's anybody on earth that's 80 years old, that's happier than me than I want to meet them. Because every day for me is an exciting journey. And I just want to make sure that I don't have days when I didn't have some aspect of a positive personal growth. And I think there's a sense of selfishness in there, but I think it's necessary to grow and contribute. I don't play golf.

I don't watch television. I don't do a lot of those things. And if I retired, I'd be divorced in 12 months because I'd drive my wife so nuts. She wouldn't want to be around me. So I want to do things that energize me. I want to constantly ask myself five times a day, why, why, why? and then try to find out the answer to that why. And that way I can live an invigorating life and it's my own life.

It's not something that somebody else is imposed on me. I spend zero time trying to meet other people's expectations because most time other people's expectations are going to be in conflict with my expectations. And the selfish part of me says focus on your expectations and still be. a giver. A lot of people are going to wonder how you ended up living such an inspired life. And obviously, you've gotten a lot of, you've got a lot of history in you, and you've focused and been disciplined throughout your entire life and met a lot of great people, one of which was Dr. Martin Luther King. And I know you probably told this story a thousand times, but I think it's great to wrap

with this one because you ended up in the right place of the right time at the march that you weren't even originally going to go to. Do you want to take us through that? And let's walk back, and it was a Thursday in a suburb of Wilmington, Delaware called Claymont, right on the border of the state of Delaware and Pennsylvania. My best friend, his dad, was a very prominent dentist in Wilmington. And I was having dinner at their house and in the background. The television was on and they were talking about the March on Washington. And so my friend's name was Warren Wilson. and his dad's name was interesting enough.

Woodrow Wilson. I had to look that up and, wait, the president? And then it wasn't even close. And so he asked if we were going to go. And we said no, and he asked us why not? And so we both chimed in. We didn't have the money.

And so he had the foresight to think that this was going to be a historic event. So he said, well, you two youngsters need to be there. And so he had two cars. He said, I'll give you one of the car. in the money, but you need to be down there. So the next evening, we took off and headed for Washington, D.C. We got in there found. At that time, the only interest in the Washington, D.C. was on Route 1.

So we came in in Route 1 and found a place to stay in New York Avenue. And so for some reason, we said, let's drive down there so we can figure out how to get down there and just see what it looks like. And we run into a gentleman on that Friday night, and he said, hey, are you guys coming to the march tomorrow? And we said, yes. And so he said, would you want to volunteer? And we asked him for what? And he said, to be security guards.

And so we said, yeah, sure, we'd love to. Well, both of us were six, four. And so I'm sure he said, oh, these guys will be really. So he said, be down at 9 in the morning. So we got down there about 8 o'clock in the morning, and we found them. He said, wow, you guys are early. So then he looked at us again. He said, we're going to have to triple the security up at the podium.

So you guys will work the podium areas. So our size helped us. So we were up at the podium. And it started early in the morning. And Dr. King was the last speaker. Some people would like to suggest that he was the keynote speaker, but he wasn't. They held King to last because they know he would hold the crowd. Sure.

And so at that time, we were told. We had an exit strategy just in case there was a demonstration at any time doing the speakers talk. We were to take them out the back way of the Lincoln Memorial. So then they said when King is done, we immediately form a V around them and we take them out to the back of the Lincoln Memorial. So Dr. King delivered the speech. And just as he was finishing, we were told that, you know, to start moving in tighter,

as he comes to the conclusion. And so I end up right beside him. I actually have a picture of it. And so when he's done, for some reason, I just said, Dr. King, can I have that copy? And he handed it to me. And just as he did a rabbi who was doing the closing benediction talk, I was saying, Dr. King, greatest speech I ever heard.

So his attention immediately shifted from handing me to speech to the rabbi. So what is interesting about it is, first of all, every speaker had an imposed time on number five minutes. You were not allowed to go over five minutes, and the only one that exceeded that was king. And so when you see the speech, you recognize that the speech had no title. You also recognize with a little research that the I Have a Dream portion was ad-lived in. Today you could do it because of technology, but you can hear a female voice in the back say, Tell him about the dream, Martin. Tell them about the dream.

Well, the voice was Bahalia Jackson, most people would say the greatest black gospel singer of all times. And she would perform at all the king's rallies. So she had heard King do this in Selma and in Detroit. And so you can see right on the document where he ad-libs from the speech and goes into the I-Havid Dream part, which is interesting enough became the most popular part of the speech. So when they're done, they go to the White House and when they walk in, President Kennedy says, Dr. King, I loved your I have a dream speech. And the media picked up on it and put that title, I have a dream on it.

But it really, when you see the original context that King submitted, it didn't have that in there. But he ad-libbed that piece into the speech. So he just handed it to you thinking, well, I don't need this anymore. Well, I don't know that he even thought about it, really. everybody says, well, why did you ask? That's a good question. I have no idea why. And so it took 50 years for it to be put in its rightful context.

I'd say 30 years no one knew I had it. My wife didn't even, we're married. My wife has no idea I have this speech. Did you keep it a secret or you just didn't think of it? No, I just never thought about it. It was when I went, how it got public was when I went to the University of Iowa's head basketball, coach. At that time, all of the newspapers in the country on Sunday had a little magazine section. So the young man was from the Cedar Rapids Gazette, and he said, we're going to do this

cover story on him because I was the first black coach in the Big Ten and at Iowa's so forth. So anyway, he's interviewing me about my background and so forth. And kind of, I call it a throwaway question. He just said to me, hey, were you ever involved in the civil rights movement? And I said, kind of. He said, well, explain. And so I actually. told him about the march on Washington. I told him about the speech. And he said, oh, you have the speech. You had it.

I mean, he got so excited. I couldn't believe he was that excited about it. So he said, where is it? Well, I had only been there about six weeks, so I hadn't unpacked all the boxes in the house. So I said, it's down in the basement in one of the boxes. And he said, can you find it? Well, I knew I had the boxes, all names on him. So I found the ones that said books and I looked for the Truman book.

And it was in there. And God, I mean, he. I thought he was going to have a nervous breakdown. He literally saw it shake, and he said, can I call my editor? And so they brought photographers down. And so for the first time, the public knew that I had. But what was interested, there wasn't a big hue and cry about it. Some people were fascinated.

But at that time, the speech did not take on the historic significance that it shares today. And so it was written and still, no. And then a few years went by, and Digger Phelps, who was coaching at Notre Dame and I were good friends, and he was on ESPN. And Martin Luther King Day was coming up. And so he asked me, hey, would you come on and talk about this? And so that was the first time that there was a broad understanding that I had this. And so then my wife got nervous. She said, hey, everybody knows you got to get that thing out of the house because you travel too much a mile.

I'll be breaking in the house trying to steal it. And she was right, and she always is. And so then we put it in the vault. Well, history has just added to it now because to get the insurance, I had to get some world-recognized authorities to document that. One, it was authentic. And then the most difficult part was trying to put a price on it. Oh, right.

And one of the person that was supposed to be a leading expert in the world on these historic documents said, as far as I'm concerned, I wouldn't dare put a price on it. And he said, because whatever price I put on, it's going to be incorrect. He says, someone else, he said, as far as I'm concerned, it's priceless. So I've always kind of felt like I was the guardian of the speech. And so I'd probably become hypersensitive about it. I used to do a lot of speeches on doing Black History Month or on King's birthday. But I always think, someone's going to think that I'm trying to use this to enhance my own self.

So I actually stopped doing talks about speeches and so forth. People have called and wanted to buy it. But it's just not who I am. And my grandma, she raised me that life is not about money. Life is about the positive experiences that you have. I look back at my grandma, and she never finished high school, dropped out in grade school, but she had a college level intellect. And she just taught me so many things. I can, to this 80 years old, I can still hear my grandma saying things to me.

Right now at 80 years old, it happens probably more in the plane than anything because my grandma instilled in me. Yes, sir, and no, sir. And so when I'm on the plane, if a stewardess asks me something, I'll say, yes, ma'am, no, ma'am. And I'd say nine out of ten times it happens because I usually sit in first class. So on the way out, the stewardess will say to me, or they'll even say, why I'm sitting there? Are you in the military? I say, no, are you from the South? No.

I say, why do you ask the question? I know what they're going to say? Because people don't say, yes, ma'am, and no, ma'am, or yes, sir, and no, sir. but that was just the way I was raised. And a lot of times when I don't do certain things, I can hear my grandma in the background jumping on me about doing it. Long before women's rights, my grandma took myself and my brother out one day on the street.

And she said, okay, the man always walks on the outside, the woman on the outside. You always open the door for a woman. If she's sitting down, you always put the cheer under and that. And so long before we got to where we are today, my grandma was a feminist before the word feminist was even in the dictionary. She taught us to respect females and there was a proper way that you treated them. You never sat down at the table before the woman sat down. You never start eating until the woman starts eating.

Now that part I probably abused, but there's just great lessons that I've learned. growing up from people who had immense influence on my life. Is there anything that you want to leave us with that I haven't asked you? We've had a pretty full hour here. It's the greatest time in the world to live right now. Every day and every one of our lives are replete with insurmountable opportunities for personal growth in our lives. Opportunities are everywhere. We just have to reach out and embrace them and make them part of.

of our lives. I mean, and I don't mean this to butter you up, but I mean, I go to event, I meet you, and we become friends, and I hope we'll become stronger and stronger friends. But that was a, if I don't go to that event, I don't meet you. If I don't go to that mastermind's event, I don't learn a lot of things about life that I didn't know. I mean, I've never been in an environment of my life where each night, when I went to bed, I had a headache.

And it was because it was so much new information. crammed into my brain at that event that had changed my life forever. Other than the March on Washington, the next single best thing that ever happened to me and as far as attendance goes is going to the Mastermind event. Well, I'm glad that I met you there as well. Jason, who runs that event, put us together numerous times at dinner. And I remember, I think it was the first of the second day, is you and me, Shep Gordon.

I remember sitting there going, all right, I guess I'm not at the kids' table. anymore. It was a lot of fun. And there's a line at the table to talk to you guys because your reputation's preceded you for sure. How lucky am I to be 79 years old and I get to attend this event? Once again, same thing. A bunch of brilliant young people. I told my wife after the first night, I said, Dedi, I've never been in an environment with so many smart people. It's intimidating how smart they are. And I said, they're all young. I'm the oldest dude. I'm the oldest dude here by far. Maybe not by far, but definitely it was a pleasure meeting you.

And thank you for coming out today. I really appreciate that. I appreciate you having me on, and it's been great visiting with you. You brought out a lot of things that I hadn't thought about in a long time. I appreciate you doing that. It helps me. Great big thank you to Coach Ravelling. If you enjoyed this one, don't forget to thank Coach on Twitter.

Coach Ravling is on Twitter. That'll be all linked up in the show notes for this episode, which can be found at Jordan Harbinger.com slash podcast. tweet at me your number one takeaway here from George Ravelling. I'm at Jordan Harbinger on both Twitter and Instagram. And don't forget, if you want to learn how to apply the things you've learned here from Coach Ravling, make sure you go grab those worksheets. Those are also in the show notes, Jordan Harbinger.com slash podcast.

This episode was produced and edited by Jason DeFilippo, show notes by Robert Fogarty. Booking, Back Office, and Last Minute Miracles by Jen Harbinger. I'm your host, Jordan Harbinger. If you like the show, please go ahead and throw us an iTunes review. This helps us get some visibility. And you know what? It feels good. So write something nice

and we'll share it with the team. Instructions on how to do that. Jordan Harbinger.com slash subscribe. You need a unique nickname or it won't let you submit. Jordan Harbinger.com slash subscribe and throw us a nice review there. So the whole team can share in the glory

of a little bit of appreciation every now and then. That doesn't just come from me. Share the show with those you love and even those you don't. We've got lots more in the pipeline. We're very excited to bring it to you. And in the meantime, do your best to apply

what you hear on this show so you can live what you listen. And we'll see you next time. This episode is sponsored in part by Something You Should Know podcast. Finding a new great podcast shouldn't be this hard, so let me save you some time. If you like the Jordan Harbinger show, you'll probably like Something You Should Know with Mike Carruthers. It's one of those shows that makes you smarter in a practical, useful way. Same curiosity vibe we go for here, just in a fast, focused format. Mike brings on top experts and asks the exact questions that you'd want to ask, and the topics are all over the place in the best way. Recently, they've covered things like why we care so much what other people think, the benefits of laughter, why

sports fans get so invested, and what makes people like you or not, the through line is always the same. Smart ideas you can actually use in real life. Something you should know has been featured in Apple's shows we love, and it's got thousands of five-star reviews because it's consistently interesting. So if you want another show that scratches that I want to understand how people in the world really work itch, search for something you should know wherever you get your podcasts. Look for the bright yellow light bulb and start listening. You can thank you. Thank me later.