What’s a Butkus?

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The dive play is the most basic play in the game. Objective: Gain one yard. The quarterback takes the snap, pivots, handing the football to the fullback – who slams into the scrimmage line, head on. The goal is to gain a yard or two. It’s not pretty, and it rarely creates a big play, but it builds confidence by creating a clear objective and accomplishing it. Simply put, if you don’t have the drive and determination to gain one yard, how in the world would you expect to score a touch down?

Finding something assumes that you are looking for it! Finding your Butkus, at it’s core means to find something that you already possess. It is already part of you, perhaps hidden deep inside your psyche or more likely, simply hiding in plain site. Right below your nose – in your heart.

In Kevin Costner’s movie “A Field if Dreams” his character, Ray Kinsella, hears a voice from the cornfield, “If you build it he will come.” He is asked to trust a whisper and hear a feeling. The voice wants him to listen and then take action – completely on faith.

While the tall corn may not be calling you, I’m certain you have had an inspired thought while showering or driving a car. A gut feeling that says take action.

Your Butkus, I say with a wink, is found slightly south by reaching around and finding your rear end. With both hands I might add! Perhaps the reason you haven’t found your Butkus as yet, is because you’re sitting on it!

So what is a Butkus?

No, it’s not But-Kis, its pronounced But-Kus. You say it deliberately, and always with attitude. If you are a sports fan you have probably heard the name, Dick Butkus. In fact most people in North America have heard that name, although they may not know who or what it is.

And yes, it is an odd name.

But, there is nothing funny about the image or the iconic status this name represents. Like a four year old, when I first heard this name and saw the NFL image of Dick Butkus, I was intrigued. Actually it was more like, “in awe”.

NFL Films states; “Dick Butkus played football with a religious fervor, with an unrelenting obsession, not to excel, but to dominate and demoralize. For Dick Butkus it never a game, but a street-fight, a place for all out, no holds barred warfare. Butkus was the most destructive defender in the game and the NFL is filled with stories of men who crossed him. He was a force of unmanageable proportions; he was Moby Dick in a goldfish bowl. His career stands as the most sustained work of devastation ever committed on a football field by anyone, anywhere, at anytime.”

Dick Butkus is remembered as the toughest man to ever play pro football. A guy who, no matter what; would not quit. He never won a championship or a Superbowl; hell his team was so bad they never even made it to a playoff game. That however did not stop him from becoming one of the best to ever play NFL Football.

Myself, as a football playing twelve year old, I wanted to be Dick Butkus. Everything from his pigeon toed hulking walk, to the colors of his uniform was formidable. It all captured my imagination. His linebacker stance, crouching like a mountain lion ready to pounce was intimidating enough. But when he moved, fully committed, he launched himself with reckless abandon; he was like no other player on the field.

Butkus, for me, became a metaphor for movement and a symbol for effort and accomplishment. No matter what the odds, you never give up. If I invoked my Butkus, I knew what to do, and when to do it.

Now that I’ve painted a picture of what Butkus looked like and how important he was, I have to tell you, I didn’t get it right away. In fact, it took me over thirty years to understand. I had to look deep within my memories to find something I thought already knew.

And that’s the rub! “Having doesn’t mean anything if you don’t know how to use” is a topic for a later discussion, but for now, its safe to say; simply knowing something does not make it valuable.

Knowledgeable people are regularly over worked, underpaid, and under appreciated not only by others, but – mostly by themselves. Michelangelo, the great artist (not the ninja turtle) says “The greater danger for most of us lies not in setting our aim to high and falling short; but setting our aim too low, and achieving the mark!”

Have you been achieving the low side of what you ask for? Looking for success in all the wrong places? Were you taught, like me, that opportunities took years of suffering to accomplish. They are beyond your control? Were you told to learn more, to create skills you did not have and go places set by someone else? Then, when you arrived, told again, it would be hard, in fact life was hard. You needed be tough and learn to put up with what you don’t want, – to get what you do! Bullshit.

I say, what you want – wants you, what you are looking for is looking for you. What you want, doesn’t merely exist, more exactly, it already exists inside you. It isn’t hard, but yes, it is intense and it does require your full attention! You have heard, I am sure of the natural laws of the universe? I contend the “Law of Attraction” exists not as an external magnet to get you what you want, rather it synchronizes your desires to bring you more of what you already have.

In the movie ‘The Lion King”, Mufasa, called down from the heavens to his son, Simba, commanding “Remember who you are!” Your job is to find, perhaps simply remember “what” it is you already possess. What whispers to you will lead you Find Your Butkus.

Strike that; Remember who you are! Find your own words, Find your??? in Life!

Like the basic dive play, create an objective you can count on – one that builds confidence. Keep it simple, something as warm as puppy. Guaranteed to gain a yard whenever you need it. Just the act of feeling good can put you in the right frame of mind to start noticing what’s important.

It’s not finding out what works in life, no, it’s finding your bliss. Trust me, if my dream was a guy named Dick Butkus, can what you want, be any crazier? Open the door to your desires, listen to your field of dreams and then allow all the people, places and things you desire to come to you.

Bob Mueller is an EMMY AWARD winner. He uses story Finding Your Butkus in Key Note Speeches, Training & Coaching.

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write by Gwyneth