Relentless: From Good to Great to Unstoppable (Tim Grover Winning Series)

by Tim S. Grover

That’s what this book is about. You don’t wait to be told, you don’t waver from your goal. When it’s time to act, you act, instinctively and without hesitation. As you will read in these pages: Done. Next.

The whole point of this book is that in order to be successful, to truly have what you want in your life, you must stop waiting be told what to do and how to do it. Your goals, your decisions, your commitment. If you can’t see the end result, how can anyone else see it for you? I can’t give you a ten-step process or a checklist for accomplishing your goals; no one can do that for you, nor should you ask them to.

Don’t think. You already know what you have to do, and you know how to do it. What’s stopping you?

congratulations: you are on a life-changing journey to discover the power you already possess.

Believe this: Everything you need to be great is already inside you. All your ambitions and secrets, your darkest dreams . . . they’re waiting for you to just let go.

But if you don’t make a choice, the choice will be made for you.

Decide. Commit. Act. Succeed. Repeat.

The minute your mind thinks, “Done,” your instincts say, “Next.”

Success isn’t the same as talent. The world is full of incredibly talented people who never succeed at anything.

they believe talent should be enough. It’s not. If you want to be truly successful, you can’t be content with “pretty good.” You need to find an extra gear.

I want you to trust who you already are, and get to that Zone where you can shut out all the noise, all the negativity and fear and distractions and lies, and achieve whatever you want, in whatever you do.

if you want to be unstoppable, you have to face who you really are and make it work for you, not against you. Truly relentless people—the Cleaners—are predators, with dark sides that refuse to be taught to be good. And whether you know it or not, you do have a dark side. Use it well and it can be your greatest gift.

“In order to have what you really want, you must first be who you really are.”

It was time to trust what he felt inside, not what everyone else was telling him to feel.

A Cleaner’s attitude can be summed up in three words: I own this. He walks in with confidence and leaves with results. A Cleaner has the guts and the vision to steer everything to his advantage. You never know what he’s going to do, but you know something’s coming and all you can do is wait and watch, with fear and respect for his ability to handle anything without discussion or analysis. He just knows.

Being a Cleaner has almost nothing to do with talent.

they know what has to be done, and it gets done. They expect to succeed,

He never sees problems, only situations to resolve, and when he finds the solution, he doesn’t waste time explaining it. He just says, “I got this.”

Cleaners have a dark side, and a zone you can’t enter. They get what they want, but they pay for it in solitude. Excellence is lonely.

He’s addicted to the exquisite rush of success.

You know exactly who you are.

I won’t ask you to transform into something you’re not and don’t aspire to be. I simply ask that you open your mind to the possibility that you can do so much more with what you already have. If you’re serious about going where you’ve never been, pushing higher and further than you or anyone else thought you could, it’s time to trust the voice inside telling you to do what you know you can do and become truly relentless.

Because no matter what you want for yourself, whether your ambitions take you to the gym or the office or anywhere else you want to be, your ultimate power source will come from the neck up, not the neck down.

You will never have a more powerful training tool than this: get your mind strong, so your body can follow. The true measure of an individual is determined by what you can’t measure—the intangibles.

That’s where your true works begins: understanding what you want to achieve and knowing what you’re willing to endure to get it.

You already have the talent; my job is to show you what you can do with all that talent so you can bust out of that cage holding you back.

No options. Most people have too many options, and they rarely choose the tougher one.

Do. The. Work. Every day, you have to do something you don’t want to do. Every day. Challenge yourself to be uncomfortable, push past the apathy and laziness and fear. Otherwise, the next day you’re going to have two things you don’t want to do, then three and four and five, and pretty soon, you can’t even get back to the first thing. And then all you can do is beat yourself up for the mess you’ve created, and now you’ve got a mental barrier to go along with the physical barriers.

When your body is screaming and depleted and telling you, “No way, asshole,” you work harder and tell yourself, “Do it. Now.” You control your body, it does not control you. You shut out the fear and emotion and physical stress and you do the thing you dread. You don’t go through the motions and watch the clock until it’s over. You invest in what you started, pushing yourself again and again beyond where you’ve already been.

Few people know what they’re truly able to accomplish, and even fewer want to find out.

Ask yourself where you are now, and where you want to be instead. Ask yourself what you’re willing to do to get there. Then make a plan to get there. Act on it.

Truth: when you’re finally able to let go and be who you really are, that’s what puts you in the Zone, and only then can you control your fear and inhibition. Without that deep instinctive component, it’s like trying to light a lighter that has no fuel inside. You get a lot of sputtering little sparks but no fire.

No fear, no intrusion. Total concentration. You’re not thinking, because thinking turns your thoughts on to everything, and the Zone is about the opposite, turning your thoughts off to everything except the task at hand. Thinking takes you away; the Zone keeps you where you need to be.

The only exception to the emotions rule is anger: controlled anger is a deadly weapon, in the right hands.

Cleaners are still human, and like everyone else they feel the same excitement and anxiety and nerves before a big event. But the difference between Cleaners and everyone else is their ability to control those feelings, instead of allowing those feelings to control them.

As the lights get brighter and the place gets hotter, you should be feeling darker and cooler, pulling deeper inside yourself. This is your Zone,

If you want to go somewhere new, you have to throw out the tired, old map and stop traveling the same road to the same dead end.

Or if you prefer: born relentless, taught to relent.

From the time you’re a toddler to the time you’re an adult, you’ve been taught to be “good.”

But right now, right this minute, you know they’re still there, in the part of you that you don’t show anyone else, the part that refuses to be taught, refuses to conform and behave. That’s the dark side of your instinct. You cannot be great without it.

Most people are the lion in the cage. Safe, tame, predictable, waiting for something to happen. But for humans, the cage isn’t made of glass and steel bars; it’s made of bad advice and low self-esteem and bullshit rules and tortured thinking about what you can’t do or what you’re supposed to do. It’s molded around you by a lifetime of overthinking and overanalyzing and worrying about what could go wrong. Stay in the cage long enough, you forget those basic instincts.

at some point, you made something simple into something complicated, and you stopped trusting yourself.

Everything you need is already inside you.

When you become too focused on what’s going on around you, you lose touch with what’s going on deep inside you. Those are the guys who are perfect in practice, but blow it when it counts. They can’t find the Zone, they’re distracted by their own thought process, and they don’t trust themselves. They’re thinking about everything that can go wrong, thinking about what everyone else is doing, thinking instead of knowing, without a doubt, I got this.

Stop waiting to be taught something you already know.

Lots of people start things; few are able to finish. Why? They don’t trust themselves to get to the end. They start thinking about everything that could go wrong, second-guessing their choices, listening to others instead of listening to themselves. Anyone can have a great idea . . . it’s what you do with the thought that defines you.

There is zero chance you’ll get anywhere if you allow yourself to become paralyzed by soft excuses and countless reasons why you’ll never get to where you want to be. Trust your gut to navigate the hard road to get there. The satisfaction and sense of achievement will blow your mind when you finally arrive, knowing you arrived on your own with only your instincts to guide you.

Stop thinking. Stop waiting. You already know what to do.

if you want to climb out of your rut and get up to the next level, you have to leave your baggage behind. It’s Superman shedding “mild-mannered” Clark Kent’s suit and glasses, the Incredible Hulk going green, Batman putting on the cape, the Wolf-man howling at the moon. It’s the ability to voluntarily or involuntarily drop all the bullshit and inhibitions and allow yourself to just do what you do, the way you want to do it, performing instinctively at the most extraordinary level. No fear, no limitation. Just action and results.

Deep inside you, there’s an undeniable force driving your actions, the part of you that refuses to be ordinary, the piece that stays raw and untamed. Not just instinct, but killer instinct. The kind you keep in the dark, where you crave things you don’t talk about. And you don’t care how it comes across to others because you know this is who you are, and you wouldn’t change if you could.