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It’s Super Bowl Sunday. You’ve got the hot wings, the dip and chips, and the Flatscreen TV. You’re ready to kick back and enjoy the Packers and Steelers in XLV. It’s great to root for winners on the field. But as you do consider these tips for a post-game plan to post some wins in your own career.

1. What’s your Super Bowl? The dream of playing in the Super Bowl is a powerful one, driving players relentlessly through every game of each season. What dream can you affix in your mind, what place do you want to go to, what shining moment are you striving for? What’s something that will get you fired up to get out of bed early each morning?

2. Put in the time. Everyone likes to talk about their favorite star players and wear their jerseys during a winning season.  But few people take notice before they’re gridiron heroes: when they’re putting in the tough hours, practicing hard when no one’s watching, and persevering through slumps, injuries, and other setbacks. Realize that for pro football players—and for you—there is no such thing as an overnight success, according to Malcolm Gladwell’s Outliers, it usually takes about 10 years.

3. Have a tantalizing talisman. The Super Bowl ring is the ultimate memento of an NFL career and symbol of success. The ring means more than its 5K worth of gold and diamonds; each ring tells the story of a team, a season, and a player.  Instead of waiting around for the company to give you a gold watch for your retirement decide upon your desirable talisman and affix a goal for achieving it. Put a pic of it on your desktop or Blackberry screen saver. Let it be known that you will obtain it if you achieve your goal. Maybe it’s a new wristwatch, diamond ring, pocket knife, or set of golf clubs. Whatever it is, consider getting it engraved, and you’ll not only have a nice symbol of your success to enjoy, but something you can pass on.

4. You might lose. Imagine slugging it out all season with the Super Bowl in sight then falling short like the Jets or the Bears this past season. Oh, the agony of defeat. And in the big game today someone must lose. Part of the appeal of the Super Bowl is watching the struggles of life play out on 52 inches of Hi Def. A dream will come true for some while for others it all comes crashing down. The fact that many of these players will start from scratch again next season is an inspiration for all of us to start anew tomorrow.

5. Get in the game. Over a 100 million people are expected to tune in to the Super Bowl. But only a few dozen at best will see time on the field. Those players will be the subject of comments and commentary from legions of spectators far and wide. In his famous In the Arena speech Teddy Roosevelt said, “It’s not the critic who counts.” Instead it’s the person who gets in the ring and takes his  lumps and comes back for more. Focus less on critiquing others and more on the steps you’re taking to be on top of your own game.

6. You might make a mistake. Immediately after the Super Bowl, everyone had an opinion on what the Steelers did wrong, or what the quarterback should have done differently, or who else should have done what.  The best lesson there is that you have to allow yourself to make mistakes of your own. Playing it safe won’t gain you much yardage.

7.  Plan your comeback. Those who didn’t make the Super Bowl are already making plans for next season. The coaches all make that clear in the post-game press briefings. The defeated Steelers are plotting a return to the Super Bowl and the victorious Packers are planning to avoid the perils of complacency. So how about you? Ready to stage your own comeback?

“It is not the critic who counts; not the man who points out how the strong man stumbles, or where the doer of deeds could have done them better.

The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena, whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood; who strives valiantly; who errs, who comes short again and again, because there is no effort without error and shortcoming; but who does actually strive to do the deeds; who knows great enthusiasms, the great devotions; who spends himself in a worthy cause; who at the best knows in the end the triumph of high achievement, and who at the worst, if he fails, at least fails while daring greatly, so that his place shall never be with those cold and timid souls who neither know victory nor defeat.”

–Theodore Roosevelt from the speech, “Citizenship In A Republic”, delivered in Paris on April 23, 1910

Before you whack it with a sneaker, take a moment to consider what the spider might teach you.

To succeed we’re often told to emulate the lowly ant. “Go to the ant thou sluggard, consider her ways and be wise,” the Bible tells us. The ant’s industriousness is also heralded in the classic Aesop’s fable where the lazy grasshopper lays around all summer while the ant is busy scurrying about preparing for winter. Even that anthropomorphic cartoon ant is always getting one over on the Aardvark.

The thing is, the ant doesn’t work alone, she’s part of a colony (they’re all “shes” except for the drones), often numbering in the millions. Some believe the colony itself to be one giant organism with each ant a mere cog in the wheel. As a result each individual ant is expendable and readily replaced. Kind of like the world of business of late.  If an ant found herself downsized where would she go? While ants have impressive specialized skills, without the colony the individual ant is doomed. Sadly, that appears to be the grim prospect awaiting many in the workforce today.

I say, if you are going to look for inspiration among the tiny critters in the corners of your house,  look to the spider. I saw one the other day, a large, black hairy jumping spider.  She was walking along what to her must have been the strange alien landscape of my glass patio table. I crouched down to take a closer look and as I did she sensed me, stopped, and pivoted quickly on 8 legs to regard me with an equal number of blue-green eyes. This little creature was the product of 300 million years of evolution. Her kind was doing their thing before the dinosaurs roamed the earth. In the scheme of things, my kind is a latecomer to the gig of life.

Amazing spider, what can we learn from your success?

1. Patience. A spider is nothing if not patient. Check out an orb-weaver in your garden, or a common house spider in a dusty corner. After spinning a web they sit and bide their time. Spiders haven’t been around for hundreds of millions of years by complaining, or blaming others for their problems. They’ve got a job to do and they do it.

2. Hunger. Spiders are usually always hungry.  It drives them to roam, or to sit motionless for hours in their quest for prey. The spider knows if you’re not hungry for something you will quickly be eaten by someone else who is.

3. A neat bag of tricks. Spiders are famous for their ability to spin webs. Some spiders, such as the orb weaver, spin elaborate webs, while the handiwork of other species can be more crude.  The jumping spider doesn’t spin webs at all except to cover its eggs but it can also release a strand when it jumps to slow it’s descent, like a parachute. The jumping spider can also jump 25 times it’s own length. No doubt you’ve got some specialized skills in your own bag of tricks. When was the last time you used them?

4. They know what’s on their to-do list. The spider doesn’t while away the day pondering it’s purpose, or wondering about its place in the cosmos, or the futility of its existence. The spider starts each day with a single-minded purpose: Overpower something, and eat it.

5. The spider is always “in the now.” Arachnids would make Eckhart Tolle proud as they are always present in their current circumstances.  They don’t waste time on the past, or live in a non-existent future. They’re not on Facebook. Oblivious to their brief 1-2 year lifespan, the spider is always in the moment.

6. They walk a lonely road. Unlike ants, the spider doesn’t have a colony to depend on. From the moment it hatches most  spiders are on their own. They have to make their own breaks and there’s no one to bail them out. Sound familiar?

7. No intimidation. The spider doesn’t sit around thinking, “There must be other spiders better than me or more talented. Look at that web, I can’t do that.” NO. The spider brings it. It’s always game on for the spider. A million other spiders competing per each acre of grass? Who cares. Subduing prey 5 times larger than themselves? Bring it on.

8. They don’t pity themselves. The odds are stacked against the spider from the start. Most are eaten long before they reach maturity. There are predators everywhere, birds, wasps, other spiders, sometimes a size 12 Converse. The English novelist D.H. Lawrence once wrote: “I have never seen a wild thing feel sorry for itself. A little bird will fall dead, frozen from a bough, without ever having felt sorry for itself.”  So it is for the spider. They live out their lives in a “no whining zone.”

I grabbed a small twig and held it in front of my spider. As if to demonstrate her impressive leaping skills she seemingly materialized on the twig.  I carefully carried her over and released her in some leaves by a fence.  The spider paused for a moment to regard me again, then scurried off  to tackle her “to-do” list. It was a reminder to me to scurry off and tackle mine.