Today is February 6 and the Navigate the Chaos question to consider is "Do you ask yourself if there is something more?"
Those who navigate the chaos often ask the question “is there something more than this?” at some point in life.
Doug Pederson is the head coach of the Philadelphia Eagles of the National Football League (NFL). In only his second year as a NFL head coach, Pederson guided the Eagles to a Super Bowl Championship.
After 14 years of playing football Pederson retired but was unsure if he wanted to coach. He thought he’d try it, to see if he liked it, and so and his family moved to Shreveport, Louisiana and raise a family. He applied for the football coaching job at Calvary Baptist Academy, an 800-student K-through-12 school, where he took his sons to school every day.
According to a Sports Illustrated interview with Pederson, reflecting upon his four years at Baptist “I was extremely happy coaching and mentoring young men. Thinking back on those four years, it taught me a bigger lesson. I wondered, Can I teach football? Can I coach football? The advice that I was getting from some of my coaches and peers was, you need to go find out if you can teach and coach. Do you like the journey? Do you like the process? Even though it was a high school, do you like putting in the time? Do you like teaching? And I did. I loved coaching. And it let me know this is what I wanted to do. After that fourth year, I just started thinking, ‘There’s got to be something more than this.’ That’s when I reached out to Andy Reid.”
Pederson played under Reid and offered his former player the job as offensive quality control coordinator. Pederson took that job and would eventually follow Reid to Kansas City and became the offensive coordinator there. In 2016 Pederson returned to Philadelphia as the Eagles new head coach.
If Pederson had not asked himself “is there something more than this?” during his time coaching high school, the Eagles may not have been Super Bowl champions.