Leading is a great book, biography but also a guideline for people who want to take on a different role in any kind of field or aspects of life- is it health, wealth, love or happiness.

The book is divided into different chapters or should I say a collection of different stories packed into different categories who will definitely show you principle for living a happy and successful life.

The chapters wildly differentiate from each other, however, they all have a fundamental message -> Lead and take charge of your own life.

What makes the chapters immensely unique is that the author tries to teach us something by sharing little but very important stories that the author has experienced at a certain time in his life.

This tells the readers but also me that the author was constantly seeking to improve and learn at every stage of his life, which is a very important thing to consider implementing in YOUR life.

Be open to change and let room for advice and improvement.

The chapters that really got me thinking were Work Rate, Discipline and Time.

Since I am a big believer in building discipline rather than depending on motivation (which I have already covered in a different blog post) I was very intrigued by the simple act of showing up early to practice and having mental discipline on every day of the week.

Furthermore, Alex outlined the importance of having leaders in your team which are able to listen to the coach and implements the principles and values of the trainer every single day.

Massive action and the willingness to train more than everybody else, this is what Alex Ferguson probably means with having high work rates every single day.

One of them, probably the only guy in his whole career who was this obsessed with training was Cristiano Ronaldo, he showed up very early and stayed longer than anyone else. He trained or should I say trains more than anyone else and is still one of the best ever. Another thing that struck me hard is the fact that Alex said that there is no balance in life when trying to achieve beyond excellence.

Until now I have always made negative experiences with staying completely obsessed with one thing in my life. Once I decided to be relentless and completely obsessed with my sports career, other parts of my life get tremendously messed up, like a relationship with my family and my performance starts to drop at a point. This is why I started to address problems more directly and had to figure out a way to also be „there“ in different fields of my life.

Last but not least, Time. Haha, this is the topic I am so pumped up every time I talk about

Ferguson outlined the importance of having a very good time and priority management in order to be successful in sports, which actually applies to any field of life.

Priority management, however, is senior to time management because if you know which things or values are more important to you, thus you can set out actions in consideration of your own precious time.

While I was reading the Book Leading a very interesting realization crossed my mind: I thought about one of the best coaches that I ever had the privilege to play for -> Cem Sekerlioglu.

He not only was leading from the perspective of a coach but also as a very good friend, leader, and person who takes responsibility for every decision that was because and about him.

Cem was truly and clearly different from all the other coaches in my career.

His way of coaching, training and getting athletes to understand the game of soccer better.

He will try to understand every part of you in the field and out of the field, he would analyze you from every different perspective and understand what you need and don’t need in order to perform in the best way possible.

Not only would he take some time to speak with you personally and give you advice on how you could be a better player, NO! Actually, this is something every coach should do, in my opinion, shying away from responsibility is shying away from problems which will only affect you even more later in life.

Back to this amazing coach!-> In addition to giving you advice on how you could be a better player, he would also tell you how the team would benefit more from you, how YOU and your role as a player are from utter importance! This is crucial.

Probably you might be thinking what the heck I am talking about, but some of you can relate to that and this is what I want.

Furthermore, he will be brutal to you at moments when you are the weakest in order to push you even more out of the comfort zone and believe me this will either break you or make you the person you are today.

He knew the behavior of players so well that he even could calculate when a player would fall short to his performance after two bad pieces of training.

In my case, when I played for the U18 he taught me to never play with pride or look down to the players we played against. To be honest it took me a long time to realize this but it is worth every penny of my invested time.

Please don’t get me wrong, I never said that „my“ team and I won the champions league or won the championship-trophy (We actually ranked 2nd 4 points behind Admira Wacker).

But what I do think is that we were mentally so prepared and unbelievably strong that no matter which opponent came, we knew we could win the game if we are able to be ourselves.

This was the cornerstone which made it all possible: In a system of 11(16) player, we were able to be ourselves and perform in the best way possible not for ourselves but for the team.

Everyone knew his job and what his responsibility was on the field if somebody would slack off, which to be honest was rarely the case, we definitely reminded him in training and out of the field with different methods like talking, coaching and giving advice to younger teammates who needed a little bit more time and self-confidence to finish the job.

Of course, there were days where we trained from Monday through Friday like we would be playing in a 4th division game tomorrow but only a quick reminder of the coach was enough to make us push those buttons that would skyrocket us into the first division mentality and the next day we would win the game with 3 goals difference. Nobody was really depending on anyone but it was more about a system of interdependence that worked with the principles of integrity, respect, and best-possible-performance.

The huge difference which separated us from all the other teams was that we never let pride, entitlement or satisfaction be a driving force, we always knew that in order to be truly magnificent we would need to play every game like it was our last and drop every sweet like it is our first. To be honest, I learned more in those 3 years or should I say 6 months of your unstoppable run that I had the last 10 years of soccer. How can this be applied in your own life? Integrity is the keyword. However, it is not the only word.

Once you realize that you can achieve way more this in the combination with other people you start seeing extraordinary amounts of success and results.

Furthermore, never be satisfied with what you achieved always ask yourself how you could have done more and where your precious time has the go in order to improve the performance on the field. Cut off pride and entitlement you are nothing but at the same time, everything that the world will ever see from you, so better start investing more time in getting better and more valuable to the world and life will reward you with the treasure of fulfillment.

No matter what you do, make, create or produce, ask yourself: Is this something I could do for the rest of my time on planet earth and be truly happy? If not stop it and don’t do it. Simply don’t do it, because it clearly won’t make you happy unless you seek short-term gratification rather than long-term fulfillment, which I believe is part of having a different perspective on life. The best book on Time, Life and Priority management I have ever read was „The 7 habits of highly effective people“ I highly recommend you read this book.

It was one of the best investments I have ever made in my life.

Have a nice day and keep going !

Life is amazing