Our research and their research

On this page, we compare what we found about our persons of interest to what other people have written about in success. This is a combination of all of our research:

Scientists and the Wisdom of Dr. Benjamin Carson written with Junious Stanton:

Researching people who are successful is one thing, but life isn’t copy and paste. You need to learn from people who are accomplished, as well as read about how it’s done. In the article “Becoming Successful is Up To You,” by Junious Stanton, he and Dr. Benjamin Carson discuss the aspect of success that is yourself.

My researched subjects and Stanton’s writing both highlight the important aspect of making your dreams happen step by step:

When you tried to roller skate you have to learn to maintain your balance. Once you mastered that, you had to learn how to skate faster just so you wouldn’t get trampled by the crowd at the rink. Once you got that town pat, you learned to skate backwards or to dance to the music that was piped into the rink. (Stanton)

Stanton also writes about how we are the biggest obstacles to our success. Whether it be fear, or letting our problems rule our lives, the things that really stop us are ourselves. We can see in both the case of Russell and Sagan that they weren’t deterred by difficulties in their lives. They definitely had to deal with significant rejection, but this didn’t stop them from growing the path to their ambitions.

Encountering hurdles to their goals actually helps achieve them. This aligns with Stanton’s writing, “Each hurdle you overcome makes you that much stronger, wiser and confident” (Stanton).

Hockey Players and the writing of Quint Studer:

After researching the hockey players, we found an article titled “Achieve and sustain excellence: seven steps to help achieve goals” by Quint Studer. This success template created by Studer was made to explain seven ways that an organization could achieve its goal to being successful. We realized that hockey player’s goals can follow the same goal achieving frame work that was proposed by Studer.

The first aspect of Studer’s goal achieving frame work, Is Incentivize Alignment, in this step Studer explains that an organization would run well if there was clear explanation as to why success and striving to do more is essential for a company and its workers to perform well. He makes it clear that a company shouldn’t settle and remain at the same level of success and should be consistently trying to improve. This aspect of Studer’s frame work can be understood synonymously with our groups “Steps to being a NHL level hockey player” and it’s Live, Eat, and Breath it section.  I believe that this can be applied to Patrick Kane’s continuous strive to play at a higher level. I’m sure there were times when he could have stayed in his normal age groups division but his consistent yearning to play at a higher level led him to his ultimate goal which is the NHL.

The Second aspect of Studer’s framework is Objective leader evaluations. I interpret this aspect as being honest with yourself, and actually improving what needs to be improved. I can link our groups “Learn from those with more experience, Play with people older than you (more experienced)” section. I am linking the two together because I believe that both of these aspects of goal achieving success are associated with learning from your mistakes. As hockey players I would imagine that Ryan Mcdonugh and Patrick Kane have had experiences where their games could have improved and it was not going to be an easy improvement to make.

The Third aspect of Studer’s framework is building skills to meet goals. This very direct aspect I believe is the most important of the steps because it really puts your goal in focus. It makes you ask yourself, what can I do to make this goal happen? Knowing what your impact on the game, is an aspect from our groups steps to being a NHL player, is defiantly the section that can best be associated with Studer’s third aspect. Patrick Kane knew that his impact was going to be goal scoring, but he also knew that he was an undersized goal scorer. Using speed and skill he found ways to achieve success in this aspect of the game and managed to achieve his goal.

Sequence change, the fourth step in Studer’s framework, is a little difficult to be interpreted and applied to the hockey players but I have interpreted it as a step that involves adapting to your surroundings and changing to the needs of achieving your goals. I want to say that this can best be grouped with “create and identity that markets what you offer to the team.” I associate these together because when you are on a team and as a group you want to achieve success, there may be times where you might have to adapt and change in order to fit the needs of the team. Patrick Kane I believe has done this because as a member of the Blackhawks there have been times where his scoring ability has needed to be put aside and he’s needed to work on his passing ability. As a result Patrick has become a prolific scorer and passer in the league and is known as a prime time offensive threat.

Transferring best practices quickly, the fifth aspect of the framework is easily associated with yet again “Learn from those with more experience, Play with people older than you (more experienced).” Both of these easily can interpret as learning from those who have success already. Patrick Kane did this by living with and playing for an NHL legend Pat Verbeek, who was the coach of his Triple AAA team, Verbeek was a prolific scorer at the NHL level and acted as a mentor for Patrick. This can also be applied to Ryan Mcdonugh; Ryan’s most instrumental teacher was his assistant coach at Wisconsin, Mark Osiecki. Mark is actually the person who told Ryan that he should try out defense.

Do not tolerate sub-par performance is also an aspect of Studer’s framework that is pretty self explanatory. Make it your only focus from our group’s steps, can be linked with this because these are two motivational aspects that keep you focused toward your goal. Both aspects are the kind that won’t accept failure and are also the type that makes you continue working towards the goal that you want to achieve. Patrick from ages 9-14 played 300 games a year, a professional only plays 82. Patrick honed his skills at a young age and made it a commitment to play at the highest level and wouldn’t accept any failure.

The last step in Studer’s framework is “Connect Often to purpose, Worthwhile Work, and Making a Difference.” I believe this aspect of the framework can be translated as, what type of positive impact you can have on your craft whatever it may be. Establishing your mark on the game is our group’s step that is best associated with Studer’s aspect. Patrick Kane’s talents have truly been blessing to the game of hockey and even larger a huge influence on American Hockey. His 2 Stanley Cup championships are just products of his hard work and determination to achieve everything he wanted.