Penn State’s successes are transferrable and can provide you similar results.

Earlier this year, Penn State’s Men’s Wrestling Team took home its 8th National Championship in 9 years. If you are a wrestling enthusiast, you will be thrilled to know that a new book was released, Dawn of a New Era, providing great depth and detail of the Coach Cael Sanderson dynasty that is Nittany Lion wrestling. For those of you that aren’t wrestling fans, don’t worry, we won’t be talking about wrestling itself, but what the root causes of the success are.

Attitude

If you listen to a PSU wrestler giving an interview, the reality is that once you’ve heard one, you’ve heard them all. They are all essentially identical. There are two themes that are consistent in the responses the wrestlers give when asked about the keys to their success. The first one is based on attitude. They all say that Coach Sanderson says to have fun. Now, anyone familiar with wrestling knows that all the preparation involved is hardly fun. Weight control, aerobic training, endless hours of weight training are all part of a wrestler’s life. This is why so few people wrestle. Because it’s really hard. But hard things don’t always have to be miserable. They can be a lot of fun. If you ask Bo Nickal, Jason Nolf, Zain Retherford, David Taylor, or other PSU National Champions about why they won, they all say it’s about having fun. What they mean though is not doing things that are fun. That is where most people get confused. They say, “Oh, I need to have fun. I will stop doing my STAT 200 homework and play Civilization VI instead.” What these champions meant is that doing the hard things became fun for them. That is the difference in attitude. How many people say “TGIF!” and how many people say “I can’t wait for Monday!” I like Mondays, because I actually have fun working. You have only two real controllables in your life. Your work ethic and your attitude. A large reason why so many PSU wrestlers win their weight class is because they have a blast doing so!

Gratitude

The other element that they all consistently communicate is gratitude. They uniformly believe that they are part of something special and are grateful for their coaching staff, their teammates, their fans, and their families. Now there is an interesting correlation between gratitude and attitude. The more grateful you are, the better your attitude becomes. I’ve spent a lot of time exploring why people get upset. And there is no better time in history than right now to have an abundance of research regarding this topic. People are just instantly ready to be angry. Twitter is basically an outrage industry. Which is why I want no part of it. Maybe it’s because I spent enough years in a third-world existence to be able to take things with a grain of salt. However, most of the PSU wrestlers aren’t from a disadvantaged background, yet they still have gratitude. They still have an immense appreciation for the situation that they are in. What this should prove is that gratitude is universally accessible. The reality is that too few of us really choose to embrace it.

You want to know the recipe for greatness and establishing a dynasty? Attitude and gratitude. Have fun doing the hard things and be grateful that you’re being given the opportunity to do so. That’s really all it takes. You don’t need a motivational speaker to provide proprietary secrets. The ingredients are right there. Attitude and gratitude. I cannot imagine a better template for this than what Coach Sanderson has established at Penn State. 8 championships in 9 years. What a remarkable achievement. WE ARE!