30 Lessons About How Champions Think In Sports And Life

Successful leaders are committed to personal growth.  They have a burning desire to increase their competency and get batter at their craft.  One of the ways I read do this is reading a minimum of three leadership books per month.  I have just finished Dr. Bob Rotella’s How Champions Think In Sports And Life.  It is excellent.
Dr. Rotella is a sports psychologist who works with many top athletes as well as some of today’s top business leaders.  If you are looking for an excellent Christmas gift for the leader in your life, this would be an excellent resource.  Click here or on the image to the left to learn more and pick up your copy.
The following are 30 Lessons About How Champions Think In Sports And Life I captured from the book:

1. “The godlike images we’re fed by the media can often disguise reality.  Superstars have doubts and fears just like the rest of us.”
2. “An athlete gets the best results when he doesn’t think.  Once an athlete learns a skill he needs to trust that skill.”
3. “The mental game is a big part of sport, but it must be combined with physical competence.”
4. “An essential part of being a great player is, in my mind, playing and conducting yourself in ways that make your teammates better.”
5. “Great performers share a way of thinking, a set of attitudes and attributes like optimism, confidence, persistence, and strong will.  They all want to push themselves to see how great they can become.”
6. “Going after big ideas takes sweat.  It takes persistence, patience, and a bedrock belief in yourself.  Not everyone will do it.   That’s why we call it trying to be exceptional.”
7. “Exceptional people, I have found, either start out being optimistic or learn to be optimistic because they realize that they can’t get what they want in life without being optimistic.”
8. “Optimism is often an act of faith, a belief in something that cannot be proven…Anyone can have it.”
9. “Optimism doesn’t guarantee anything in sports.  It just improves your chances.”
10. “Misfortune happens to everyone.  Champions just refuse to let it push them into doubtful, fearful thinking.”
11. “People tend to become what they think about themselves.” – William James
12. “A champion understands that it’s fine to savor an experience when it’s positive, to remember it, to embrace it.  When an experience is negative, he understands that he can’t let himself get stuck in it.  He can see no benefit from ingraining a bad experience by reliving it.”
13. “Champions understand that they must be confident to a point that some people might find offensive.”
14. “Confidence is essential to patient, sustained effort, and patient, sustained effort is what leads to success.”
15. “They never confused the ability to drive the ball straight with the ability to get the ball in the hole.”
16. “What’s important is not avoiding adversity, but how an individual responds to it.  You have to develop mental hardiness that responds to setbacks with energy and confidence.”
17. “When it’s time for you to perform and produce, you have two choices.  You can feel confident.  Or, more likely, you can fail.”
18. “No one can weigh or measure talent.”
19. “My clients tend to be players who, while they may been quite successful by others’ standards, have disappointed themselves.”
20. “You have to be a legend in your own mind before you can be legend in your own time.” – Jack Nicklaus
21. “You’ll probably never see a picture accurately labeled ‘talent’ because talent exists largely inside people.”
22. “More than expertise, Google prizes qualities like the ability to work with a team and lead it, to acknowledge failure and learn from it.”
23. “Excelling at any athletic endeavor demands a commitment to work persistently at the fundamentals and to long hours of practice in between competitions.  There’s an old saying that you sweat in practice so you don’t bleed in the game.”
24. “If I’m better than you now and I practice more than you every day, how could you ever hope to catch me?” – John McPhee
25. “Exceptional people tend to have habits that help them achieve what they want.  People who are struggling tend to have habits that undermine them.”
26. “You never give up.  You never give in to doubt, fear, or fatigue.  Giving up is the only true loss.”
27. “The ability to take a dream and use it to create a process is what separates exceptional people from mere dreaming…What’s important is whether the dream or goal gives birth to a process.”
28. “Exceptional people immerse themselves in process goals. They care most about how well they follow their chosen process every day.”
29. “In sports and business, if you’re not aspiring to dominate, to be the very best, you’re coasting.  And you can only coast in one direction.”
30. “I’m fortunate that people content to be average don’t often ask for my time.  I get to work with people whose goals and dreams excite them and excite me.  When I asked LeBron James what his dreams were, he didn’t hesitate.  He wants to be the best basketball player of all time.  Exceptional people understand that if they set such goals, there is no such thing as failure.”

This only scratches the surface of the wisdom this book contains.  Once again, click HERE and pick up your copy today.

Click HERE or on the image to the left and as a free gift for subscribing to this site, you can receive my new Ebook 1269 Leadership Quotes: Timeless Truths From 2016’s Top Christian Leadership Conferences.  Featured are the Johnny Hunt Mens Conference, ReThink Leadership, Orange and Leadercast Conferences among others.  If applied, these insights will make you an exponentially better leader.  Enjoy!!!