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July 25 - August 15, 2023
Anywhere you go, no matter what you do, there are going to be distractions. What are you willing to give up? Every year by Labor Day, Michael would shut down everything outside of basketball and just train. Three workouts a day: workout, golf break, workout, lunch, golf break, workout, dinner, bed. Every day. No commercial shoots, no promotional tours, no events. Just work, because he knew better than anyone else that all the outside stuff was the result of hard work on the inside, not the other way around. Shoe deals and commercials don’t make you an icon. Being unstoppable makes you an icon.
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Are you learning and studying your craft so you know everything out there, or are you content to just show your biceps and hope that earns you respect in the gym?
Failure is what happens when you decide you failed. Until then, you’re still always looking for ways to get to where you want to be.
Success and failure are 100 percent mental. One person’s idea of success might seem like a complete failure to someone else. You must establish your own vision of what it means to be unstoppable; you can’t let anyone else define that for you. What does your gut tell you? What do your instincts know about what you should be doing, how you’re going to succeed, and what you’re going to succeed at? How can anyone tell you what that should be?
But dealing with setbacks is how you achieve success. You learn, and you adapt. When everyone else is talking about how you “failed,” you show up like a professional, remap your course, and get back to work. That’s the progression of good-great-unstoppable. No one starts at unstoppable. You fuck up, you figure it out, you trust yourself.
Fuck “try.” Trying is an open invitation to failure, just another way of saying, “If I fail, it’s not my fault, I tried.” You tried your best? Or did you do your best? Huge difference. “Well, I tried.” Okay, now tell me what you did. Do, or don’t do. Do it, and if it doesn’t work, do it again. Did you do it this way? That way? Did you explore every idea you had? Is there anything else you could possibly do to turn things in your favor?
Winning is an addiction. The great Vince Lombardi once said, “Winning is a habit,” which is also true, but I think it’s a habit that inevitably becomes the addiction. You can’t understand it until you taste it, and then you can spend a lifetime craving more. You feel it in your gut, in the dull ache of your dark side begging for it. When you’re alone in the Zone, you know nothing except the unwavering hunger for success. Every choice you make, every sacrifice, every moment you spent alone preparing and learning and dreaming . . . it’s all to feed that addiction. And if you ever once feel the
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But I’m convinced childhood is overrated; you can have a much better childhood as an adult, when you have the freedom and the affluence to enjoy it. You get this small window to be a legend, and you have the rest of your life to act like a kid, at any age. Push it as far as you can, and even if you make it until you’re thirty or thirty-five, you still have decades ahead to enjoy what you built for yourself.
You have to crave that pressure, embrace it, and never let up. You don’t have to love it. You just have to be insatiable for the results. • • •
Every dream you imagine, everything you see and hear and feel in your sleep, that’s not a fantasy, that’s your deep instinct telling you it can all be real. Follow those visions and dreams and desires, and believe what you know. Only you can turn those dreams into reality. Never stop until you do.
The greatest battles you will ever fight are with yourself, and you must always be your toughest opponent. Always demand more of yourself than others demand of you. Be honest with yourself, and you’ll be able to meet every challenge with confidence and the deep belief that you are prepared for anything. Life can be complicated; the truth is not.
