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

by Tim S. Grover

You know what people say about you, and it just drives you harder. Let them hate you; it only shows their weakness and emotion and makes you more powerful. You don’t need friends; your friends need you. You know whom you can trust . . . and they’d better never let you down.

get the results they wanted. It’s still your responsibility to surround yourself with excellent people and keep those people accountable, which is especially challenging when you’re extremely successful.

When someone says, “I need to be surrounded by positive people,” I just laugh. You know what that really means? I want people who will lie to my face and make me feel better.

start explaining, that person is going to ask you again and again and again. Don’t explain, don’t make excuses. Truth takes one sentence. Simple and direct. A question, an answer.

If a Cleaner screws up, he wants it to be because he did what he thought was right, not because he did what someone else told him to do.

A Cleaner is done when he says he’s done, not when you say he’s done.

Success and failure are 100 percent mental. One person’s idea of success might seem like a complete failure to someone else.

When someone else says you’ve failed, what they really mean is “If that were me, I would feel like a failure.”

People who admit defeat and say they had no choice just aren’t serious about success, excellence, or themselves. They say they’ll “try” and then give up when that doesn’t work.

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,...

It’s not weak to recognize when it’s time to shift directions. It’s weak to refuse to consider other options and fail at everything because you couldn’t adapt to anything.

In any situation, it’s the courage and confidence to know it’s time to make a change.

Today I teach the best of the best to take care of their bodies because when I hit initial roadblocks, I refused to see my situation as a failure.

Done. Next. A Cleaner’s favorite words. There’s always more work to do. And more to prove. Always more to prove.

On the rare occasions when you do feel like celebrating, it’s a brief, private moment you don’t share with anyone else, because no one could possibly understand what you went through to get to that point.

It’s that momentary feeling of “Enough,” followed by a deep, hot surge of “More.”

Everyone else will tell him he did a great job, and he knows it’s true. But their approval means nothing to him because the standards he sets for himself are so much higher than anyone else can possibly set for him.

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.

Every detail of his life, every hour of his day, the lonely time he spends in the gym, the people he seeks out to help him maintain that excellence, everything revolves around being on top and staying there.

forget about responsibility and goals and performance. I get that. 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.

A Cleaner feels burnout like everyone else, but the idea of walking away and not thinking about what he walked away from creates more anxiety and stress than keeping it going; that addiction is still demanding to be fed. That’s why you see guys retire and return; they’re still not satisfied, and they still have something to prove. Not to you, but to themselves. The pressure is all internal. 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...