Success Frameworks: John Wooden's Pyramid of Success

Like the keystone for self-empowered success that I teach my clients, Coach John Wooden’s principles and leadership framework, which came to be known as the Pyramid of Success, enabled his players to quickly and easily take control of achieving their goals, and over the years has been applied in athletic, academic, corporate, and personal settings.

Who Was Coach Wooden?

John Robert Wooden was a distinguished and revered American basketball player, coach, and teacher whose nearly one hundred year life spanning two centuries (October 14, 1910 to June 4, 2010) was the epitome of accomplishment. A trailblazer, John Wooden was the first person to be inducted into the National Basketball Hall of Fame in two categories, recognizing his many triumphs both as a player and as a coach.

Coach Wooden’s favorite role was that of teacher and his favorite subjects were leadership, achievement, and success. He taught the struggling UCLA basketball team he took over in 1948 a simple framework of leadership qualities and characteristics that almost immediately resulted in the team shattering countless records, including winning an unprecedented ten National Collegiate Athletic Association (NCAA) championships, over the course of Coach Wooden’s twenty-seven years with the team.

One of Coach Wooden’s famous sayings is, “success is peace of mind which is a direct result of self-satisfaction in knowing you made the effort to become the best you are capable of becoming.” To help his players (and the wider audience with whom he shared his philosophy after he retired from coaching) become the best they were capable of becoming, Coach Wooden identified a total of 25 leadership characteristics or traits they could use personally and as a team to achieve their goals. Collectively, these leadership qualities became known as the Pyramid of Success. The leadership traits are classified into fifteen “building blocks” and ten qualities that serve as “mortar” holding the pyramid together.

What is Coach Wooden’s Pyramid of Success?

At the base of John Wooden’s pyramid in the left and right corners are two “cornerstone” building blocks, the qualities of industriousness and enthusiasm, that in combination give strength to the structure.

The rest of the fifteen building block characteristics are: friendship, loyalty, cooperation, self-control, alertness, initiative, intentness, condition, skill, team spirit, poise, confidence, and competitive greatness. Cementing the building blocks together are the ten mortar qualities: sincerity, honesty, reliability, integrity, ambition, adaptability, resourcefulness, fight, faith, and patience.

In his framework, Coach Wooden includes remaining adaptable while planning and goal-setting, being in-tune with your faith and praying to a higher power, and staying true to yourself. These are all traits that closely align with my three-pronged keystone for self-empowered success: connect define pivot℠. In its entirety, Coach John Wooden’s Pyramid for Success is most closely related to the define prong of my success keystone, which has to do with self-discovery and authenticity.

What is Ellen McCarthy’s Three-Pronged Keystone for Self-Empowered Success?

I am the non-woke coach, a success facilitator for patriotic American women. My online success coaching services are an alternative to the woke life coaching offerings that dominate the self-help industry today. I help my clients and audience quickly and easily take control of achieving their personal and professional goals.

Incorporating the integral aspects of being human - body, mind, and spirit; the bedrock of independence and freedom upon which the United States was founded; and my personal and professional experiences as a patriotic American woman, wife, mother, daughter, corporate executive, and entrepreneur, I have implemented and optimized a three-pronged keystone for self-empowered success: connect define pivot℠.

The three prongs are: connecting with your Creator and positive energy; defining who you are and what you want/what feels good to you; pivoting to a better position. Each of the prongs, or keys, in the keystone encompasses a set of underlying success strategies.

The define key is the part where you figure out who you are and what you want, and enjoy the journey of becoming ever more authentically you. It’s an ongoing process, and one that involves refining your prior decisions and conclusions as you progress through your life, allowing growth and expansion.

Defining is where you get more specific about who YOU are. You’ve connected with your true nature with the connecting key, and with the defining key you identify what makes you unique and exceptional.

What John Wooden’s Pyramid of Success is Missing

Central to defining who you are is determining your best qualities, and qualities that will serve you best. The traits and characteristics identified in the Pyramid of Success can all serve you well as you strive to succeed.

However, I think the three most important ingredients for success aren’t listed in the pyramid, and are very often overlooked. These three ingredients are: loving yourself, focusing on the positive, and knowing when inaction is the appropriate response.

Loving yourself is essential. And there is so much to love! We are each created in the likeness of God, who is the purest of positive energy and the source of all that is good. We each come into this world loved unconditionally by our Creator, with exceptional talents and capabilities and unlimited potential. We each have the God-mind within. Don’t ever forget that. Love yourself. Nobody has the power to interfere with your love of yourself unless you let them. Don’t let them. It’s as simple as that. You can do it.

Focus on the positive. Project positivity out into the world and to all with whom you come in contact. Worry, fear, and other negative thoughts and emotions do not serve you. Disregard them. Release them and deactivate them from your experience. When you find yourself pondering something negative, take a breath, appreciate the negative thought for giving you the clarity to realize that you’d like to feel good not bad, and turn your thoughts to something that makes you feel better. When you think of things that make you feel good, you attract positive experiences into your life. The more you appreciate, the more your heart’s desires manifest and flow easily to you.

Sometimes, the best reaction is no reaction. Sometimes, the best course of action is to take no action at all. Don’t be afraid to be still. There is much wisdom in taking time. Think, for example, of the email you sent in anger that you wish you hadn’t sent. Wouldn’t it have been better if you counted to ten before you sent it? Or slept on it? In this fast-paced world we live in it seems like we have to keep moving and doing. But we don’t. Just stop and breathe.

As you strive to experience favorable and desired outcomes, always be the best

YOU that you can be. Cultivate your leadership qualities. Most of all, love yourself, be positive, and breathe.