tipping point, page-46

When I was a kid I used to play football, like many other kids in Australia. It was cold and wet most of the time, and I was fast but too lean to be effective as a hard player, so most of my time was spent in the back pocket. In Year 10 we absolutely belted the competition, mostly only conceded a couple of goals or a handful of points and the ball spent most of the time in a direct trajectory from the centre to our goals. These were great times for our team, everyone was happy, the coach was labelled a hero and basked in the glory that can only come from being a high school football coach.

The following year we were excited to hear that due to our greatness we would be raised to the next level, a harder competition. We walked out on that field with memories of our undefeated greatness, and then immediately had it handed to us. We had become the worst team in that league and lost game after game after game.

None of us could fathom our fall from grace. We had the same great players that had been bombing 50's all the previous year. Same great coach, that had us doing the same drills we had been doing previously. The team started breaking down, there were little in-fights - sometimes big in-fights(!), snide remarks if someone missed a mark. This was not a good time for football in our school.

One day, I remember it as clear as yesterday, a kid came over that didn't play football and started making comments. Oh my Lawd, did we beat that kid. The team was angry and looking for a scapegoat and this kid, this kid, comes over and starts telling us how to play footy, pointing out what our faults were...what did he expect. So we thought he'd be on his way. Obviously we got pounded again that weekend.

Next week at training, who do we see. That human punching bag back again, sayin' stuff, itching for a flogging. Didn't he care that we were hurting? Didn't he care that we used to be hero's and we were hero's, how dare he judge us and rub it in our faces. More beating ensued, but he kept coming back, mouthing off. Stupid looking, glasses wearing, chess playing, maths doing, shiny black shoes wearing twat.

So it turns out his dad was a VFL coach. Between smacks to the mouth he was pointing out that we had never had the football in our backline before and that we had all of our best players up front and no-one to get it to them or defend.

Did we listen to him and make changes to our team line-up, or did we beat his ass until graduation and lose every game?

The stockmarket, Luxy, as you will learn, will make fools of us all. Just because you believe in a company or a product, or just because you paid too much for a stock, or if there are things that need to be changed for a company to succeed (like say, management), well, beating on the smart kid won't change anything. If you find yourself only listening to the people with the same opinion as you, find yourself a few reasons why you may be wrong and consider them carefully. You may still be right, maybe we all started smoking pot that year of highschool and maybe that kid lied about his dad being a coach, but more often than not you'll at least understand why the market (which is just a bunch of lemmings running from one side of the see-saw to the other) can be beaten and instead of getting angry, maybe you'll get rich.