HOW TO LIVE A LIFE OF MEANING - LESSONS FROM MJ

When Michael Jordan came back to the NBA after a brief retirement playing baseball, he didn’t play to the level he was accustomed to. He vowed to get himself back to being the best player in the league during the offseason. He had just spent over a year transforming his body to play baseball and had only a few months to get himself back into basketball shape.

However, during the offseason he was committed to filming a movie. Every day he would be on set from 7AM to 7PM and would have his first intense workout during his lunch break. After filming, he would play in a nightly basketball game that he organized with players from around the NBA until 10PM. After the game he finished his night with a second intense workout. He put himself through this grueling schedule daily because of his relentless pursuit of excellence.

Sure he was paid millions of dollars to be a high performing athlete but he didn’t NEED to put in that level of effort. To put things in perspective, he had one of the biggest shoe brands in the world, he already won three NBA championships, and he was considered one of the best basketball players of all time. Still his priority was doing whatever it took to play at the level he expected of himself.

This is just one of the many stories to highlight Michael Jordan’s drive that were included in The Last Dance, a documentary that told the story of the Chicago Bulls road to winning their 6th NBA championship.

It was clear through the documentary that Michael Jordan focused on being the best he could over everything else. Getting to a level of excellence through hard work and sacrifice. He did this to win and be the most dominant player in the game. 

These lessons of how to win are important but that wasn’t the most important theme I walked away with after watching. There was something more meaningful. 

Winning six championships is an amazing accomplishment but results alone aren’t inspirational, at least not in the long run. It was his mission of HOW he approached the game that is still meaningful. It’s what inspires us to this day, long after those championships have been won. Everything from his work ethic to his leadership.

He had standards for how he thought the game should be played, one of the most emotional scenes of the series is him describing why he pushed himself and his team so hard. There was a right way and a wrong way to play. He had values that he lived through his actions because it was important to him.

In the final scene of the documentary, Jordan spoke about his legacy and how it impacted others, according to him “My passion on the basketball court should have been infectious because that’s how I tried to play, I played for them. It started with hope, it started with hope.” Leaving a legacy to inspire others was important to him.

This is consistent with theories studied on fulfillment and meaning. 

Viktor Frankl was a psychiatrist who spent his life studying meaning. He didn’t just have theories, he discovered his insite through practical application in the toughest of conditions. His perspective came through his experiences in concentration camps during WWII. 

He observed that even in horrible conditions, you can find meaning and fulfilment. Even when everything is taken from you, it can be found. It is inside of us and just needs to be discovered through struggles, serving others, and focusing on something beyond yourself. 

Every person has the ability to find meaning within themselves and every person has the ability to do something meaningful. They just need a mission to fulfill.

Frankl writes in his book Man’s Search for Meaning “Everyone has his own specific vocation or mission in life; everyone must carry out a concrete assignment that demands fulfillment. Therein he cannot be replaced, nor can his life be repeated. Thus, everyone's task is unique as is his specific opportunity to implement it.”

Michael Jordan’s talent and platform was basketball but his gift to others was showing how to embody a mission through actions. Frankl also had some insight into why focusing on this led to his success.

Frankl writes “Don’t aim at success. The more you aim at it and make it a target, the more you are going to miss it. For success, like happiness, cannot be pursued; it must ensue, and it only does so as the unintended side effect of one’s personal dedication to a cause greater than oneself or as the by-product of one’s surrender to a person other than oneself.”

Application

It might be tempting to feel like we will do something meaningful when we reach a certain position or platform but that is a mistake. If the type of impact we want to have isn’t happening in the role we are in, it won’t happen in the role we think we need.

When we choose a mission we are dedicating ourselves to something outside of ourselves. We can serve a mission through every day actions. Frankl found that even the act of doing something small for fellow prisoners brought meaning and fulfillment while in a concentration camp.

By starting with something we can do right now, we make every part of our life meaningful, not just when we achieve a goal we set out for ourselves or attain something we want. 

We can choose to fulfill a mission by demonstrating our work ethic or sharing lessons we learned that were helpful to us. We can use our struggles and downfalls to help people through their own. 

Finding a Mission

Your mission is what you choose it to be. When you embody that mission, that will be your gift to those around you. Find something that is important to you and that you would like to continually work towards. Ask yourself questions to discover themes.

Examples of questions to ask yourself that will help you figure out your mission: 

• What do I enjoy?
• What are my talents and skills?
• What am I interested in and would like to learn?
• What unique life experiences do I have?
• What qualities do I look up to in other people?
• What values or principles are important to me? 
• What is something that I would like to “pay it forward”?

Once you have some answers written down, brainstorm how you can start to demonstrate them in whatever you are doing right now. 

Start today!