Be Your Best

Recently, I was able to meet someone that I have read a lot about and idolized growing up — Bob Bondurant.  Bob Bondurant is a racing legend and a race car driver who raced with Shelby American among other teams — he won the 1965 World Championship and many other races over his career.  Bob raced Corvettes in the late 1950’s and early ’60’s, and then joined Carroll Shelby’s Shelby American Team in 1963 and raced the famous Shelby Cobras.  He then later raced with Ferrari.  Bob also was a consultant for the famous racing movie “Grand Prix” starring James Garner.  After a serious crash at Watkins Glen in 1967, Bob started the Bob Bondurant School of High Performance Driving which has trained over 250,000 students, including many professional racers and celebrities.  Bob today remains a leading authority on advanced driving and professional driving instruction.

So why bring up my meeting Bob Bondurant and how can he help you in your career endeavors?  There is one very simple, but powerful, principle that Bob Bondurant conveyed to me that he has utilized throughout his career and he has always symbolized to me.  It is something we can all benefit from in our careers, and could be the most important single ingredient in achieving the results you are looking for.  It is focused passion.

Focused…

When you listen to and watch Bob Bondurant, you see and hear a person that has an incredible ability to concentrate and focus.  His legendary racing wins and incredible driving talent further demonstrate his unique ability to create a laser beam focus on what his mission is.  In the 1960’s or even today, making one little mistake due to distraction going 160 mph on the race track meant disaster or death.  Bob has had the ability to block out every distraction when needed in order to accomplish his goals whether those be racing wins or in business.

Passion

Bob Bondurant is about as passionate of a person as you will ever meet.  Bob has been racing bikes and cars ever since he can remember, and just ‘oozes’ passion for racing.  His focused passion drove him to become one of the best race car drivers in the world (these guys in the 1950’s and 1960’s did not make the kind of money drivers make today for the risks they were taking—so it truly was passion that motivated them).

If you want to be successful at anything, it is logical that one way to get there is to look at others who are already successful and copy what they do.  Bob Bondurant’s focused passion is something everyone should consider copying to help achieve your goals.  Obviously passion isn’t really something that is learned or forced, but it can be ‘found’.  There are all kinds of ways to make a job or project more interesting or challenging or motivating — to instill or find the passion inside you.  Without the passion, ultimate success cannot happen.

On the other hand, focus, as a part of focused passion, is something that can be learned and a skill that can be continuously improved.  The ability to work without distraction is a very powerful tool.  Some of us are naturally able to focus our passion better than others.  For most of us though, it is critical to work hard at honing the skill of intense focus since 2x — 3x the results can be accomplished in distraction-free ‘zones’.

Bob Bondurant has that combined laser beam focus + intense passion that has created tremendous success on the world stage.  Very few of us will ever race at 160 mph, but we can all copy a race car driver’s focused passion to be more successful!

 Be Your Best,
Todd D. Gifford