Epictetus was right when he said: pic.twitter.com/RxLxNzMBdJ
— Psyche Wizard (@PsycheWizard) July 19, 2026
"Win the morning, win the day."
We make our habits and our habits make us. Better habits make better versions of ourselves.
James Clear, author of Atomic Habits says, "Habits are votes for the type of person we want to become."
Serving is the only part of the game where the player has total control of the shot. It's her pre-shot routine, footwork, toss, contact.
"Big hand" makes bigger contact.
F = MA (physics) force = mass x acceleration
Better contact determines both direction and velocity
Coaching lessons surround us...if we're open to seeing them. The 1993 comedy, "Dave" shares an abundance of valuable lessons and standards.
"I want you to do this because it's the right thing to do."
The authentic President violates every principle of integrity in the interest of politics. He's the antithesis of principled. For him, it's all about him.
Be willing to help.
The Secret Service tells Dave they need him as a double for the President for the good of the country.
Fake it until you make it.
We sometimes lack the skills or the experience to execute a tough job. Leverage our skills to upgrade our capabilities and succeed.
Be adaptable.
Dave has to "become" instead of impersonate the President. He has to grow rapidly into a job that requires him to navigate waters he has never even imagined.
Play the part.
In his "day job," he acts as a celebrity impersonator. Sometimes leaders feel the weight of "imposter syndrome," feeling underserving of the assignment. Dave works on mastery.
Surround yourself with capable people.
Dave literally is in the midst of a palace coup. He enlists assistance from a trusted friend and earns the respect of his Secret Service.
Keep learning (his entourage administers training)
Dave knows nothing about tripartite government or how the Executive functions. He gets a crash course and gets up to speed.
Everyone won't like you. Deal with it.
He quickly learns that there is plenty of opposition (and support) in Washington. He's developing a thicker skin while in the job.
Authenticity helps - if you're not a jerk
Authenticity cuts multiple ways. If you're authentically selfish, lazy, and soft, others see it. But if you're intrinsically honest, kind, and a sharer, you gain allies.
"When you hurt someone intentionally, that is not a mistake."
He's caught up in forces beyond his control, sometimes ignorant of policy that would offend anyone's sensitivity. His action or inaction harms a cause of The First Lady, who calls him out. He learns more about the issue and becomes a problem solver, stepping on toes.
Resource management is on you.
Dave quickly understands, "The buck stops here" and the 'lightweight' learns that he can throw his weight around via title and power.
Public relations matters
Leaders may be 'performative' - shaking hands and kissing babies. His humanity and sincerity shine through in how he treats others.
Share.
In the White House kitchen, he prepares a midnight snack, an oversized sandwich. He cuts it in half and shares with his Secret Service agent (Ving Rhames), who sits down to eat with him.
Have a big picture plan.
Dave's 'handlers' in the palace coup have a plan, but Dave has other ideas. He genuinely has the interest of the country at heart, despite being an unelected imposter.
Develop new ideas
In his day job (employment agency), he sees the joy and fulfillment of clients who get work. In a classic "Chekhov's Gun" moment, he proposes a National Employment Act, seeking full employment.
"You don't know how much you can do until you stand up and decide to try."
Coaches have enormous influence as teachers, mentors, and leaders. Understand how one person can make a world of difference.
Be worthy.
"Dave, I would have taken a bullet for you."
The 'job' of leadership has many parts - student, teacher, decision maker, advocate, judge, 'director', etc. Embrace Dave's genuine decency, capacity for growth, and integrity.
Find the coaching and leadership lessons that inhabit everyday life.
Lagniappe. Gregg Popovic says, "Don't ask for minutes. Make me play you." JVG tells players to take a hard look in the mirror (sound quality fair).
Some may know the term "sell out" meaning to betray. What about selling in?
1. A teacher had an unruly class. At her wit's end, she created a novel assignment. She distributed a paper with each classmate's name and each student had to write two things they liked about each and return the paper. She then cut and pasted the compliments and distributed to each student. There was a giant turnaround.
Years later the teacher passed on and many from that class went to the wake. And some pulled a wrinkled piece of paper from their purse or wallet with those compliments. Help others be seen and heard.
2. One day practice was slow. I gathered the players in a circle and asked each player to say something positive about the girl on either side of them. Not "I like her hair," but something about the player. One player said about our best player, "She's amazing." Remember MUDITA, "your joy is my joy."
3. "Water the flowers." Consider this exercise. Pair up and "sell why your partner deserves a role on the team."
"In the end, once we got him here and once he got in the field, Rob was great. He was great. He had a great career here, but he was a great teammate. Everybody loved him and not because of his (personality) and all that, but just the way he competed and the type of teammate he was. Sometimes the first impression is not always the right one.” - Bill Belichick about Rob Gronkowski via Mike Giardi in Boston Sports Journal
What kind of player are you?
First, the question should be, "What kind of person are you?" as we place the person ahead of the player. Players are "people" not "assets" or "pieces on the board." You have feelings, families, friends, strengths and weaknesses. That's humanity.
1. Person > Player
"How you do anything is how you do everything." As Mike Lingenfelter said, "Culture comes from consistency."
Help at home, excel in the classroom, do your best on the court.
2. Compete
Learn to compete. Ask yourself, "what does competing look like in volleyball?"
“My father always used to say, don't raise your voice. Improve your argument.”
— Reads with Ravi (@readswithravi) July 13, 2026
— Desmond Tutu
Lagniappe 2. Play with force. Power your approach to attack and block.
The most powerful passage from Meditations by Marcus Aurelius: pic.twitter.com/IEigLmHrDz
— Reads with Ravi (@readswithravi) July 19, 2026
Stoicism is simple but not easy. The top principles of Stoicism center on mastering your mind, virtue, and responding to life with clarity rather than impulse.
The regular season schedule is published on Maxpreps.com.
MVB has a highly competitive schedule including three tough matches to start.
Emotional self-regulation is a powerful skill for student-athletes. Celebrate small victories while staying under control.
Athletes show positive body language:
Strong posture - Stand tall with shoulders back and head held high, signaling confidence and readiness. Servers show positive posture.
Eye contact - Athletes lock eyes with teammates or coaches to show focus, trust, and engagement, especially during huddles or timeouts.
Encouraging gestures - Positive touches help. High‑fives, fist bumps, pats on the back, or a thumbs‑up reinforce team unity.
Composed breathing - Slow, controlled breaths signal calm under pressure and assist your reset after mistakes.
Active listening stance - Leaning in slightly, nodding, and maintaining open posture during coaching moments shows respect and focus.
Many sports show symmetry. For example, in basketball, teams want to get more and betters shots than the opponent. Offense works to setup opportunities without turnovers and defense wants to force "one bad shot" and force turnovers.
In it's simplest iteration scoring arrives via:
The symmetry arises from better serve-receive. Better strategy, better communication, better execution. Working on serving simultaneously improves serve-receive.
Attacks
Each season with graduation, offenses must "replace" kills not available from established players. Some increases occur via "redistribution" to ascending players and others occur from "player development" to players who earn a larger role and more opportunities.
The best "drills" have offense, defense, communication, decision-making, and competition. Other drills have value (e.g. small-sided games) because they allow more touches.
Practicing attacks includes competition against blockers, which also builds their skill.
Block-kills
Last season Melrose had a lot of blocks but also left "chips on the table" with opportunities to block the outsides as teams limited middle attacks.
Practicing block-kills also requires hitters to exert creativity scoring with "the short sword" on tips, rolls, tools, cut shots, and so forth.
The best players take advantage of competitive practice to improve and to help those around them gain edges.
Lagniappe.
Brad Stevens emphasizes "attention to details."
What general details do you think matter?
"Never argue with a person who buys ink by the barrel." - Chuck Daly
Writing or speaking more doesn't necessarily improve the quality of arguments. Curiosity and openness add more value in deciding arguments.
Adam Grant in Think Again defines three important points in determining negotiations.
1. Find common ground.
2. Have better arguments, not a laundry list of more items.
3. Think like a scientist. Critically evaluate evidence.
Common ground
Rather than thinking, "she's the one," consider where we agree. That can lower the temperature of a disagreement. It's not always "A" or "B." Cooks realize that a substitution can add value (e.g. applesauce versus oil). If someone in our family has a peanut allergy, maybe she can tolerate sun butter.
Volleyball - where can we agree about a player's strengths and needs?
Better arguments
Disney CEO Bob Iger got a meeting to discuss a merger with PIXAR chief Steve Jobs. Jobs had a long whiteboard where he listed the PROS and CONS of a merger...synergy versus competition.
Job came up with three arguments in favor and about twenty opposed. Iger said, "It looks as though you're opposed." Iger respond that was not the case, because the strength of the PROS strongly outweighed the list of the negatives.
Years ago the Patriots had a superb athlete Tebucky Jones - a workout warrior, big, fast, tough. He had an impressive nine year NFL career, yet it's tempting to think what he could have been if he had more football ability.
Being an exceptional athlete and great teammate helps, yet it represents only one box amidst others including skill, VB IQ, and the mental game.
Volleyball - "I trust her when she's on the court" is a compelling argument.
Perspective
"Think like a scientist." Find evidence, both supporting and disconfirming to generate an argument.
I like the way Connelly Early (currently injured) pitches.
Preseason scrimmages create foundational data for earning rotational spots. "The players make out the lineup card."
Volleyball - "Force me to play you."
Rethinking
"Better" thinking depends not only on data but on actual performance. I know that Coach Scott Celli could make out a lineup card today, but he wouldn't feel good about it without watching how players respond to opportunity and challenges of actual game play.
He's been open to 'rethinking' lineups over the years. "Every day is showtime."
Lagniappe. Think twenty years in the future. What advice would you share with your current self?
A recurrent blog theme is the opportunity to learn across domains. How can players learn from a K-drama ("Misaeng: Incomplete Life") where the hero arrives at a trading company with no domain or work experience?
Think back to your early volleyball experiences - no platform skills, awkward serving, embryonic footwork. As you evolve, you grow skills, game understanding, physical and emotional maturity. If you can do that for volleyball, why not at home, in class, and in your first jobs?
Here's a "hallucination" from Claude.ai about one "hero journey" where the protagonist begins alone, isolated with no allies or mentors. Yet he grows and persists.
I'm not recommend a watch, but a study of the narrative arc.
Geu-rae is a great case study precisely because he flips the usual leadership assumption on its head — competence isn't the gate, character is the engine that builds competence over time. Here are the leadership lessons that come out of his journey:
1. Attitude is trainable before skill is.
Geu-rae can't do the technical parts of the job when he starts, but he can control his attitude, effort, and honesty completely. Leaders who wait for someone to be "ready" before investing in them get the sequence backwards. The people worth developing often show the trainable traits — coachability, humility, follow-through — long before they show the trainable skills.
2. Process discipline (his baduk/go background) transfers across domains.
Geu-rae's years studying Go didn't teach him office work, but they taught him how to read a position, think several moves ahead, stay calm under pressure, and learn from a loss without collapsing. The lesson for leaders: don't just evaluate direct experience — look for transferable discipline. Someone's rigor in one domain often predicts how they'll operate in a new one.
3. Psychological safety unlocks effort; contempt shuts it down.
The contrast between Sang-sik (Geu-rae's team lead, who is demanding but fair and invested) and the higher-ups who dismiss Geu-rae for his background is the show's central leadership tension. Sang-sik gets more out of Geu-rae not by lowering standards but by making it safe to fail, ask questions, and try again. Leaders who signal contempt for someone's starting point guarantee they'll never see that person's ceiling.
4. Accountability without excuse-making is a competitive advantage.
Geu-rae almost never blames circumstances. When he screws up, he owns it and adjusts. This matters for leaders because it's rare and it's a strong predictor of long-term development — someone who metabolizes failure into correction improves faster than someone equally talented who externalizes blame.
5. Merit systems have to be built, not assumed.
A recurring theme is that "meritocracy" at the company is aspirational, not real — plenty of decisions run on pedigree and politics, not demonstrated ability. The leadership lesson: fair evaluation doesn't happen by default. Leaders have to actively build structures that let character-and-effort candidates get evaluated on their actual output, or the informal hierarchy will just reproduce itself.
6. Small, consistent wins compound into trust.
Geu-rae doesn't have a single heroic moment that proves himself. He earns credibility through repeated small deliveries — showing up early, doing the tedious task well, not cutting corners. For leaders, this reframes how you build trust in a new or unproven team member: you don't need to wait for the big test; you accumulate evidence.
7. The team, not just the individual, is the unit of development.
Sang-sik's team functions as a genuine developmental unit — people cover for each other, share credit, and absorb newcomers' mistakes without punishing them publicly. Geu-rae improves faster because he's inside a team culture built for growth, not just inside an org chart.
If it's useful, the throughline for a blog piece could be: competence is a lagging indicator, character is a leading one — which would pair naturally with the Duckworth grit material and the Wooden/Stoic patience piece you've already written, since Geu-rae is basically a live case study in both.
The Misaeng to MVB Message:
Misaeng in the game "Go" describes a stone that is not yet fully alive on the board.
MVB 26 has a team full of players "not fully alive on the board." They move along a high character, high commitment arc that creates possibility.
