Note on winning
“WINNING” by Timothy S. Grover - my notes:
Everyone is not a legend or a beast. Not everyone who plays well once is “going to be a problem”. Everyone who drives a Ferrari is not “on fire”
In the language of motivation, that is ENTRY LEVEL
Motivation is for those who have not decided whether or not to commit to their goals
Winning wants all of you. Winning is selfish. Winning takes you through hell, and if you quit that’s where you’ll stay
Greatness is built inside mental bomb shelters.
Distractions can be fatal if you don’t manage them. You can’t remove distractions, you can manage them. Get routines in place to manage this.
Confidence is your ticket to freedom, and gate way to shake hands with winning
You get in the race, but the price to continue in the race goes up and up. Confidence is something that continually gets built, as you stay in the race longer and longer
More wins you get, more confidence you get, but more confidence you’re going to need, cause the next step costs more and more
Every decision, every move, rooted in confidence
The greats don’t need to be told what to do during dynamic game situations, because they have gotten elite coaching and practiced with their coaches over and over
Babies get up, fall down, laugh and cry, do it over and over. At no point do they say I’m done with this. They do what feels right. They don’t care what you think about it.
If they don’t like what you fed them, they’ll spit it out.
They’ll sing and dance for no reason. Draw crazy scribble pictures, and dress in whatever feels right. One purple boot, one orange sneaker, fairy wings, and a hard hat, and 4 tee shirts, and singing happy birthday to everyone on the street. Until the adults get involved, you can’t wear that, you look crazy, get in the house, change your clothes, it’s nobody’s birthday why are you singing?
No matter how confident those kids are, eventually someone shames them out of it
Or something happens to make them believe they’re not good enough in some way
Very few kids have the ability to ignore that, and it stays with you
Everyone who has succeeded has had the confidence to look a bit crazy, when everyone sees it and tells you to stop. It’s lonely
You can’t break confident people, because they’ve all been broken over and over. And learning for themselves how confident and powerful they really are
When you’ve been knocked down, confidence gives you patience to stay down for a minute, assess what happened, and get up stronger
When you’re giving everything you have, and your life to winning, it’s hard to tolerate people who don’t (if they are connected to you)
You have to accept people don’t get it. You are creating distance from them. You’re obsessed, you’re crazy, you’re the problem.
You’re solving problems they can’t even see
Makes you harder and colder, and deadens your emotions to how other people feel about you
The greatest winners are the least sensitive. Hardened to criticism
The zone is about calmness and clarity. Emotions are the opposite. The more emotional you get, the more you have to deal with those feelings, instead of focusing on what you’re doing
We are not robots, I want you to be happy and sad, just not at the same time while you are trying to win. Too erratic. Not playing with emotion, playing with energy
Focus, intensity, alert, and strong. Steady and consistent. Your mind must remain stronger than your feelings
Weakness, laziness, jealousy, negativity, frustration … every morning you decide whether or not to give those things a vote.
To develop that level of control, you have to understand what’s dictating your behavior
When everyone is in your ear, you must remain the maestro of what’s going on in your head
If you react to what everyone says to you, or about you, you will lose
Control your thoughts, control emotions, control actions, outcome
What are you willing to control, what will you allow to control you?
The most common emotion in high level people is anger, but as with all explosives, this comes with caution. Works only if natural response to competition, and you know how to control it. Otherwise you lose control of it in heat of the moment. No control to clench fist, takes more control to open it and walk away
If you haven’t learned how to control the vehicle with that kind of nitro, it’s going to crash
Calm gives the most control. Rage takes the most away
Learn controlled rage. Rage isn’t sustainable.
That kind of intense emotion burns quicker and goes out. Use huge emotion, tank drains to empty, and you wonder what happened
The greats know how to shift gears
Sculpt… remove parts you don’t need… equivalent of working smart, not hard
It’s grinding without the self imposed resistance, done from addiction or identity
The art of saying no, deleting things instead of adding them. Time for everything equals time for nothing.
Laser focus, total commitment to the end result
Kobe and MJ didn’t just work, they always added pieces that took them higher
Everyone else keeps improving, but you are running the old tired software
Even when you get back to the top, winning expects you to carry a piece of that hell with you
With every win you learn more, know how you have to prepare to get back to the top
Every trip back you’re rougher, harder, less emotional, more scared. You barely feel the heat after a while.
Hell is the chilling realization that you’re stuck, and will probably stay that way
To get out of your own personal hell, pull, grab, reach, slide, dig, claw your way to freedom
You have to embrace the negativity and cynicism of others, the more you can withstand, the greater your chances of getting back in the race
The hell of complacency, no rage or fire, just the silent hell of apathy
The CEO who takes the check from a business he doesn’t want, athlete who takes the check from a losing team, the relationship that you don’t want to be in
Everyone has been through something so horrible, it’s always inside them. That’s your ticket to winning. Scar tissue is one of the strongest things your body can manufacture.
How do you get out of hell? Build yourself stronger than before.
You don’t pick up the pieces, the pieces pick you up. Not everyone will like how you’ve been re-assembled. You’re different. They’re right
You can’t be hurt because whatever your opponents can do to you, has already happened
Don’t conquer your fears, use your fears. You can have fear, but not doubt.
When someone says they have no fear, their challenges aren’t big enough. Fear is instinctive, we are hardwired for it. Fear is about playing to win. Doubt is playing to not lose
Resilence is power to stay in the fight, when instincts tell you to run. When everything is going wrong, you focus on what is within your control. When you’ve been blindsided by bad news, and have nothing to hold onto, residence is your lifeline.
You don’t need to make butterflies go away, just get them going all in the same direction
That’s how you manage a loss: Dissect losses until they hold no power over you
Must learn to handle tough losses, to realize how much we can handle
Using disappointments, failures, insults, sleights, and laying them all in front of you … mentally re-connect with how each made you feel, nauseous, radio active hot, the one that burns you without having to touch it.
That’s your superpower. People are afraid to get close to that hurt and disappointment, but you must learn to draw power from it
It’s not about revenge or anger, or slight to people who hurt you, it’s about total focus and tunnel vision for what’s in front of you. Not untamed emotion about the past.
You must learn to draw energy from this, but it can become too myopic, and push you too hard. Instead, you must step back, get help, rest, think big picture, play chess not checkers… come back at full power
Preparation, confidence, commitment, partnership with voice in your head. Total self honesty.
The greatest lie “I have plenty of time”
Spending more time creating a false image of being a winner, rather than stopping being a loser
You don’t have that much time. Every day is a race.
**Stop managing time, manage focus
And when you manage focus, you use all your time effectively
Most people wonder how long something will take, winners just keep going until the job gets done
Start training yourself to keep what focus really feels like. Learn how to fight your brain to stay locked in on simple tasks
Focus and the zone are different. The zone is completely unconscious. Focus is extreme levels of conscious
You have to experience everything that goes into winning. Your skills and opportunities have an expiration date.
Winners greatest fear is not having enough time to complete their lives work, not finishing.
Winners NEED to finish