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Dave Ungrady/GoGrady Media
Teacher | Best-Selling Author | Journalist | Motivational Speaker
Everyone's Born Ready For Greatness
The mission of the Born Ready Project is to help everyone achieve their greatness by teaching life skills to make effective decisions and act resilient. Decision making and resilience are important to achieving greatness.
Your Life is Shaped by the Choices You Make
Len Bias was primed for basketball stardom before he made a fatal decision on June 19, 1986. Two days after the Boston Celtics made Bias the number two pick in the NBA draft, he chose to consume a large amount of cocaine, suffered a heart seizure and died. Bias was considered as good, if not better, than Michael Jordan, who was a year older. His career could have been one of the greatest in NBA history.
Before games, Bias’s coach Lefty Driesell would ask his player how he felt. Bias’s typical response: “Coach, I was born ready.” It turns out, Bias was born ready to be a great basketball player, but he was not born ready to make the best decisions about things that could affect his future.
Bias’s death proved the potential consequences of making a bad decision. Bias’s family and friends still struggle to accept his death. The University of Maryland athletic department fell into a period of despair and restructuring that still affects the department today. Federal drug legislation that created great disparity in sentencing for crack and powder cocaine users and distributors has resulted in overcrowded prisons and a disproportionate number of young black men being sent to jail. The mighty Boston Celtics, 1986 NBA champions, then entered into a prolonged period of futility.
Every day, young people make decisions that alter their lives, some more grandly than others. Born Ready Project founder Dave Ungrady speaks to students/athletes at schools, clubs, camps and events, as well as adults, about the importance of decision making and resilience, using Len's story as a tool to help young people determine the greatness for which they were “born ready”.
How the Born Ready Project Began
What's Decision Fitness?
The ability to stop, think and make decisions when there is not much time to think about it.
In-the-moment decisions are the most difficult to make. You are likely unfamiliar with the situation and have little time to think about the decision. Further, you have not made time to practice ways you could properly react.
The Born Ready Project teaches ways to become Decision Fit. The key is to know the best ways to use your head and heart to help you make an effective decision. You can learn techinques that will improve in-the-moment decision making.
Read a sampling of what's taught at a Born Ready Project seminar on Decision Fitness.
Testimonial
“Dave came out to present to our Seasonal Leadership team at Six Flags, people who are in the perfect season of their life to hear this message, and it clearly resonated and helped to further develop this group. People still talk about the presentation and the Born Ready Project and it was nearly two years ago that Dave delivered the message. Thank you, Dave! Godspeed."
Nate Gross, Director, In-Park Services, Six Flags America in Maryland, about a speech on decision making
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