Be the best at what is free!

Over the course of this year, the story of a Swedish football team from a village of just 800 people, Mjällby is making waves around the football world. With 6 games left, they are 8 points ahead of the second placed team and are on the course to win what seemed to be a highly unlikely title given that they are far from being a Swedish powerhouse, let alone an international one. They also don't have a rich owner bankrolling their efforts as their budget is only around $9 million a year, typical for a mid-table team in Sweden.

A few days ago, I stumbled upon this article released in AP and while reading it, a quote mentioned by the club's chairman (Magnus Emeus) stuck in my head. To quote him, "We need to be best on the things which are free". In a footballing context, it reflects having as good of a team spirit, matchday preparation, tactical discipline, physical strength and in general, everything that can be trained mentally or physically to be at as good parameters as possible. While ultimately teams can't always buy the best players possible, we often hear stories about players and teams who through hard work, discipline and team effort, rise above the sum of their parts and emerge victorious from the hardest challenges. Other such examples recently include Leicester's title run in 2016, various European runs of very small teams (just last season alone, Djurgarden, Celje or Rapid Vienna come to my mind, very small teams making it to final stages) or even teams such as Brentford or Brighton who use their resources and knowledge very effectively to achieve far better results than much wealthier teams.

Now the question that comes naturally to all of us when reading this is: How do we apply these lessons from sports in our day by day lives? How do we become the best at what is free? If we can find the answer to this question, we can emerge as stronger and more capable people than we previously thought and improve our lives even more as a result.

Personally, I think a big part of reaching this goal is realizing that it is a matter of constantly being up for the challenge and follow small and incremental steps to success. While we can never predict when we will reach our targets, be it financial, career wise, relationship wise or any skill you are training yourself for, training your mindset and your modus operandi will cause a big positive difference. And the best part of this is that you don't even have to start with large changes. While it can be hard at first especially when you have immediate pressure to succeed, working on getting the process right will be more valuable in the long term than the immediate result you might get otherwise.

One quick example I can give is sticking to as clear of a schedule as possible when it comes to your activities: Always show up on time to events, follow the advice received to the best of your abilities, be present and involved in everything you do and stay as focused as possible. The success is again never guaranteed, but showing that you want to be there, together with doing what it takes to be there is already a big part behind what defines successful people.

For example when it comes to my work, even though I have been teaching at a high level for years as shown by my students' numerous national and international accolades, having the experience and the skills required is not enough, as a large part of my success involved doing as well of a job as possible at the things that are free. Knowing when to listen, when to give a hint, when to step up and take the lead or even knowing when to slow things down have been essential especially recently for me as I adapt my years of experience in the ever changing environment of problem solving and programming competitions to offer an even more complete experience to each and every single one of my students.

If we want to attempt finding a deeper answer, training skills which only depend on yourself is also key. While nobody can predict how strong you can become at a certain thing, showing that you are doing whatever it takes and that you will do it regularly regardless of whether you feel like doing it or not will help you get sooner or later to a result you will be happy about. Discipline, perseverance and consistency, together with strong patience form a solid foundation which allows you to do well in life.

To conclude with another sporting example, recently I started picking up padel as a hobby. For those who might not know, padel is a 2v2 racket sport which combines tennis and squash on a smaller court than tennis while keeping the costs much lower. While I am not exactly a physically strong person (and training this will still take some time), using the soft skills I developed from work together with following the advice I received from both stronger players and online tutorials caused noticeable changes to my game without having more powerful shots or dramatically changing my technique. Preparing for the games better, adapting to each situation and using my strengths better have helped me a lot and the best part of this is that I didn't have to pay a single penny out of my pocket to do it.

In the end, being the best at what is free is not about changing everything about yourself, but about framing your challenges differently and valuing the processes and the traits that bring success more than the actual results. Even if some days, weeks or months can be off and nothing seems to work out, keeping up at working on the skills which don't cost money to train is going to bring you results you would've never thought they are possible.