Dorrance on training leadership
”Dorrance conducts a thirty minute meeting with his rising senior class once a week during spring semester, and they discuss Frankl’s book (Man’s Search For Meaning) and how it applies to the UNC program’s core values of attitude, character, performance, discipline, community, and ambition. All we are trying to do is to let them know how we expect them to behave, but it is shocking to see how few understand the value of something as simple as nobility.”
“Dorrance regularly reads what he feels is the seminal quote from the book, ‘If there is a meaning in life at all, then there must a meaning in suffering. Suffering is an ineradicable part of life, even as fate and death. Without suffering and death, human life cannot be complete. The way in which a man accepts his fate and all the suffering it entails, the way in which he takes up his cross, gives him ample opportunity—even under the most difficult circumstances–to add a deeper meaning to his life.’ For Dorrance the quote is a scathing indictment of whining, which he sees as one of the most destructive aspects of athletics…Frankl writes about the nobility of suffering, and his basic message is that you can’t always control the events in your life, but you can control your attitude toward them.”
