Letters To My Son

Fear does not automatically lead to courage. Injury does not necessarily lead to insight. Hardship will not automatically make us better. It is resilience that makes the difference.

People treasure what they measure. If you can’t measure it you can’t improve it. Walk the walk and get others to follow you. Be a leader that is so motivated every day that you motivate other people.

I want you to ask yourself what some of those meaningless habits are, that you have in athletic competition. Habits that don’t mean anything. They’re important but you do them automatically and without thought and association.

You can create that mindset of abundance instead of focusing on the things you don’t have. Look, we live in a comparison society. That’s why social media is so big because it allows you to open up and compare yourself against everybody else. As you connect, there’s a lot of positives of social media but we want to make sure we connect and don’t compare. Compete and don’t compare.

“If you were given the choice of anything in the world to do, what would it be? If your answer is not what you’re currently doing, Why not? Are you passionate about this one thing or do you just kind of like it?”

“The requirement for concentration is what sets deliberate practice apart from both mindless routine performance and playful engagement. While hard work is instrumental to success, it is simply not enough.”

“Start noticing when you’re replaying that horrible scene for the 3rd or 300th time and see if you can observe yourself watching it. See yourself third row from back in a theater, watching your movie. And then ask yourself, is this really the movie we want to watch again?”

The point is to get in touch with something that makes you feel great, but not to let yourself starve or be stopped by a fear that you’ll fail, by a fear that it can’t be done.

“Give yourself the emotional permission to spend time on those things today that will create more time tomorrow. Remember, this is like planting seeds.” - Rory Vaden, Procrastinate On Purpose

“We may not all be likely to climb into a burning vehicle to save an accident victim, but each of us has the potential to face down our own psychological demons, overcome them, and get on with the business of living.” - Robert Biswas-Diener.

“Winning is never impossible - just look at the sports page of the newspaper. Every day, in every city in America, you can pick up a sports page and read about something that happened the day before that was not supposed to happen.”

Outperform your contract. Don’t do something until you get it right, do it until you cannot get it wrong. Are you willing to give up what you want now for what you want most later?

So the energy that you’re bringing, is it contagious? Of course it is. The question is is it worth catching? Or is it worth avoiding?

“When visualizing, one starts by imagining and accepting all the sensations and emotions of a competition - the smell of freshly cut grass, the touch of the wind and the trees and the sun or rain, to deafening crowd noise or silence, and the butterflies (that feel more like bees or hornets).”

It was the great Vince Lombardi, Jr. that said “gentleman, we will chase perfection, and we will chase it relentlessly, knowing all the while we can never attain it. But along the way, we shall catch excellence.”

“I believe that we are at our best when we are not even considering ourselves in life. During my best days, I don’t even think about or consider myself because I’m too busy working and helping other people.” - Viktor Frankl, Man’s Search For Meaning

Achieving inner excellence is a process. Building mental muscle, like building physical muscle, requires time and effort. So be patient. And this much I will tell you. The more you work on the inside, the more it will show on the outside. People cannot read your mind but they can read your body language.

“Humility is born of respect. Respect for what we do not know. Respect for what we cannot readily see. But out of this humble approach to life, we are more likely to appreciate the beauty that surrounds us, more likely to gaze into a microscope or peer at the stars and be awed, more likely to be inspired by little acts of kindness.” - Admiral William H. McRaven (United States Navy Retired).

We do what we think we can do. We don’t attempt what we think we are incapable of. But we can change that if we’re willing to question and challenge these long held beliefs. This is what I want for you.

“Success is not about never failing. It’s about knowing that when we do inevitably fail and get knocked down and bloodied, it’s all about knowing you have the mojo to get back up.”

“Helping others can provide us with enthusiasm, encouragement, and even joy by forcing us to summon them when we’re feeling discouraged. If one lights a fire for others, one will brighten one’s own way.” This is what I want for you.

Going to a seminar once or twice a year is a waste of your time and money if what you learn is not put into practice every day. If it’s not put into practice every day, you don’t see the meaningful change and when you don’t see any meaningful change, guess what, in a blanket statement people say ‘training doesn’t work.’

“The most certain way to ensure failure in this world of ours is to try to please everyone.”

Give yourself permission to disappoint some people. This gives you the freedom to say ‘no’ to certain requests and give a big ‘yes’ to others. You can never please everyone and you should stop even trying to.

Quite a number of job applications ask for your hard and soft skills. So in this episode, let’s break it down exactly what the skills are and how understanding how they are wildly different can give you an advantage when you land that interview.