Nothing LeBron James Does Will Ever Be Good Enough
Nothing LeBron James Does
Will Ever Be Good Enough
And The Same Goes For You
For the past fifteen years or so, there’s been no better storyline in the NBA than this guy.
LeBron James.
I could list you a whole bunch of his accomplishments right here, but suffice to say that he is considered to be one of the very best basketball players of all-time.
You could even make a case for him being the greatest ever.
And there’s a lot we can learn from LeBron and apply to our own lives and businesses.
Three things in particular.
1. Zero Dark Thirty
LeBron is currently playing in his ninth consecutive NBA Finals, an incredible feat of sustained excellence.
For the past few years, to ensure he remains focused on basketball when the games matter most, James has stayed away from social media throughout the Playoffs.
So for a few weeks every year, no tweets for his 41.7 million followers on Twitter, no snaps for his 38.1 million followers on Instagram.
He calls his annual social media blackout, “Zero Dark Thirty.”
Why does he do it?
“[Because] there’s too much nonsense out there. This is when I lock in right now, and I don’t need nothing creeping into my mind that don’t need to be there.”
You don’t have to be a superstar athlete competing for a championship to find social media distracting. Companies like Twitter and Facebook have the world’s best engineers working hard to make their platforms as addictive as possible.
For everyone.
That’s why, when you’re trying to knuckle down and make some serious progress towards a goal, it can be massively helpful to implement your own version of Zero Dark Thirty.
(Apps like Freedom and SelfControl can help you with that.)
As Bruce Lee once said:
“The successful warrior is the average man with laser-like focus.”
Social media hinders your focus.
Get good at blocking that out when needed, and you’re much closer to becoming successful.
2. Investment
LeBron is now 33 years old in his fifteenth NBA season, and he’s in better shape than ever.
He’s always been strong and resistant to injury, but he’s taken it to another level this year by playing in every game and surpassing 100 total games in a season for the first time.
He leads the league in minutes played, and his closest rival in that category has played the equivalent of 14 fewer games this season.
Despite the heavy workload, LeBron is putting up incredible numbers and has led his team to yet another Finals berth.
He scored 51 points in a game last week, the highest scoring performance in the Finals for 25 years.
How does he sustain such excellence?
Last year it was revealed that James spends an estimated $1.5 million per year on his body.
From Business Insider:
James’ house is essentially a laboratory with a team of scientists that help him stay in tip-top shape. That team includes a former Navy SEAL who serves as his biomechanist, a recovery coach, the Cavs’ team of physical coaches and trainers, plus personal chefs and masseuses. According to Windhorst, James has a full gym, ice tub and hot tub, and hyperbaric chamber in his home.
A former teammate had this to say about LeBron:
“Where a lot of people don’t do it, he puts a lot of money behind taking care of his body. A lot of people think it’s a big expense, but that big expense has allowed him to make a lot more money for a long period of time.”
That’s not an expense.
That’s an investment.
And the more I read and learn about successful people, the more I see high levels of investment.
They invest serious time, energy, and money into achieving their goals.
How about you?
3. Nothing You Do Will Ever Be Good Enough
Despite all his success and all his greatness, LeBron James gets a lot of hate.
Read any social media comment thread and you’ll see it.
Typical LeBron critic.
Sometimes you even seen it on television, by well-dressed, non-anonymous people who no longer live in their mother’s basement.
All that criticism and vitriol…
Despite James being one of the greatest basketball players of all-time.
Despite exceeding the unprecedented hype surrounding him when he entered the NBA.
Despite all his philanthropic efforts.
Despite his incredible work ethic.
Despite his three championships and countless other accolades.
Still, despite all that, there’s hate.
Which tells me this: nothing you or I do will ever be good enough.
Because if LeBron James still gets criticized after everything he’s accomplished, there’s little hope for the rest of us.
The only sane thing we can do is ignore the critics and keep moving forward.
If you have a hard time doing that, here’s a quote from Theodore Roosevelt known as The Man in the Arena, something LeBron James himself credits for helping him stop caring what people say about him.
“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.”
Hope to see you in the arena.
…
P.S. I’ve been tracking everything I’ve earned and spent since 2011 and have just published my finance report for May.
As you’ll see in there, I spent more than $10,000 in a month for the first time.
$5,000 of that was an investment.
Check out the full report here.
…
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