Former New York Yankees Hall of Fame baseball player Reggie Jackson, AKA Mr October, AKA 1977 World Series MVP is quoted as saying, “I sometimes underestimate the magnitude of me.”
I can’t tell you how much I fucking love this quote. The audacity of it. He repeated a part of it years later to an interviewer in response to a question about how he was feeling during one of his at bats during that MVP World Series when he famously hit three home runs off of only three pitches. Three swings, three home runs. Fucking incredible. On the biggest stage, this guy hit three first-pitch home runs. That will likely never be done again. Anyway, an interviewer is going over one of those at bats with Reggie adding context. What he saw, which pitch it was etc. During one of the at bats he asked Reggie what he was thinking about. With all those people watching him under the bright lights of Yankee Stadium, what was going through his mind at that moment? “The magnitude of me.”
“The magnitude of me.”
For me, it doesn’t get any better than that. When you think about great leaders, athletes, business men and women, generals, politicians, they all possess this quality of extreme self belief – many from childhood. They’ve always known it. And the really great ones, they do it on the biggest stage. When the pressure is on, that’s when they really turn it up. Mohammed Ali was running around telling everyone as a little kid that he was going to be the greatest. He hadn’t earned shit at that point, but he knew it. He felt it. More importantly he acted on it. Reggie wasn’t Mohammed Ali, no one is or ever will be, but he had that same confidence in his abilities. He didn’t shy away when the pressure was on.
I want my clients to feel this level of confidence in my service to them. I want them to know that when the lights are brightest and the pressure is on, they’ve got nothing to worry about. I live for these moments. It feels like the World Series to me, it really does. I don’t think about the ‘magnitude of me’ but I do think about the magnitude of importance it is to provide the highest quality service available to each one of my clients. There’s no place I’d rather be than right here.
LIFE LIKE JAKE