How Champions Think: In Sports and in Life

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.

I understand that safety and security are nice to have. But safety and security can become more important to an individual than being exceptional and doing fantastic things over the course of a life. When that happens often enough in a society, the society begins to die. It gives up its leadership role in the world. Accepting the importance and necessity of competition keeps

Exceptional people really do come to believe that the journey is more important than the destination.

I think having faith and believing that things are ultimately in God’s hands is very close to trusting your ability in sports such as golf. When a golfer is in the right frame of mind, he’s confident that he can produce the shot he sees with his mind’s eye. He trusts that the skills he has ingrained through practice are going to work for him if he just lets them and doesn’t try to guide or steer the ball. But at the same time, part of his thinking is acceptance of whatever happens to the golf ball once he hits it. He knows that because he’s a human being, not every shot will come off the way he intends it. He knows that because golf can be a capricious game, his ball is sometimes going to take a weird hop into the woods. He knows he can only do his best and wait to see what the outcome is.

Devise an improvement plan and commit yourself to it. Persevere.

We can choose to believe in ourselves, and thus to strive, to risk, to persevere, and to achieve. Or we can choose to cling to security and mediocrity. We can choose to set no limits on ourselves, to set high goals and dream big dreams. We can use those dreams to fuel our spirits with passion.

We each have the power to construct our own self-image and that the self-image we construct will very likely determine what we become in life.

What’s the decision going to be? You get to write your life story, will you be heroic or just someone trying to get by? Will you be the star or someone sitting at the end of the bench.

No one gets to the top alone. A golfer needs a good swing coach and a spouse, family, and friends who believe in him and encourage him.

Learned effectiveness flows from the character traits we’ve been talking about—optimism, confidence, respect for your own talent, persistence, and commitment.

He respected his own talent, and he set about working very hard to develop it. He had dreams, and he wanted to see how good he could get.

If he wanted to be great, he would find the time and energy. The actual number of shots I suggested was not as important as the idea that Lebron would set a practice goal for himself, commit to achieving it everyday , and wait patiently for results. Patience was essential.

He needed to be willing to take risks. He needed to commit himself to going with his first instincts. That first instinct is the product of the subconscious brain, and he had honed his subconscious perception over thousands of practice shots and rounds of golf.

Optimism doesn't guarantee any results, but it improves your chances

Exceptional people are resilient. Resilient people react to failure by finding something they can cling to, some hope for the future.

They have optimism and confidence. Because they are optimistic and confident, they react to setbacks not by getting discouraged and giving up, but with persistence. Their attitude is, “I’m not playing well right now, but when I put it all together [or our team puts it all together], I’ll really be something. I can beat anybody.” Because they persist, they get better. Because they get better, they experience success. And that success reinforces their optimism, their confidence, and their respect for their own talent. That’s the virtuous circle.

A champion understands that it’s fine to savor an experience when it’s positive, to remember it, to celebrate it.

An exceptional person expects at least occasionally he will lose. Learn from the situation and refuse to take it personally.

Performance process goals involve things like staying in the present moment, accepting whatever happens as it happens, underreacting to everything, being unflappable, and totally trusting in your skills during competition.

It means that you never give up. You never give in to doubt, fear, or fatigue.

Individuals who achieve durable, frequent success are optimists. They shake off their doubts and know in their heads and in their hearts that in the long run, they are going to be successful, they’re going to have great careers, everything will fall into place, and wonderful things will happen to them.

I counsel people to laugh at what other people perceive as failures. I tell them not to care if other people think their goals are crazy.

If someone in that category asks me whether he should keep going, I don’t have an answer. I have questions. The most basic is, “Are you sure you’ve honored your commitment?” By that, I mean to ask whether the client has done what he set out to do, which is to make the strongest possible effort to become as good as he can be by creating and fulfilling performance and preparation processes.

I tell them to recruit kids whose coaches report that they had tremendous work ethics. They lifted weights on their own during the off-season. They showed up early for practice, stayed late, and asked for extra help on their skills. They were leaders who helped push everyone on the team to work harder. And they displayed these traits both when the team did well and when it struggled through adversity. It’s relatively easy to be enthused and hardworking on a team that’s winning. It shows more character to display those same attributes on a team that’s losing. It speaks to a person’s mental toughness, toughness that will be invaluable in dealing with the setbacks and rejections that inevitably come along in a business career.

The first thing you have to do is decide that being optimistic is important to you, because you understand that optimism is essential to fulfilling your dreams and attaining your goals. Once you make that decision, you have to start looking at things from a different perspective.

We prepared properly and performed well, and it just didn’t go right,” then there’s nothing to regret. You just have to be determined to get ’em the next time.

What’s important is not avoiding adversity, but how an individual responds to it. You have to develop a mental hardiness that responds to setbacks with energy and confidence.

A touring pro who sticks with the same coach gains clarity and stability in his golf game. A player who flits from coach to coach often winds up confused.

Perseverance is an essential component of any exceptional person’s talent. And anyone can persevere if he wants to badly enough.

They have confirmed my belief that the ideas people choose to have about themselves largely determine the quality of the lives they lead. We can choose to believe in ourselves, and thus to strive, to risk, to persevere, and to achieve.