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

by Tim S. Grover

You have to stop thinking.

When you become too focused on what’s going on around you, you lose touch with what’s going on deep inside you.

I’m not telling you to stop searching for answers. But learn about yourself, and then trust what you know so you can build on what you already have. It’s not a science. Instinct is the opposite of science: research tells you what others have learned, instinct tells you what you have learned. Science studies other people. Instinct is all about you. Are you willing to base your decisions and actions on research done by and about people you don’t know, whose best advice is to tell you to change? Who knows you better than you know yourself?

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

But instinct is only half the formula; you can’t be a relentless competitor without a trip to the dark side, and that’s where we’re going next.

And before you try to tell me you don’t have a dark side, let me promise you, everyone has a dark side.

The satisfaction doesn’t come from the risk, it comes from mastering it. I own this.

Staying safe means being limited, and you can’t be limited if you’re going to be relentless.

A Cleaner controls his urges, not the other way around.

That’s what the dark side does: it shuts down the laws of right and wrong and allows you to discover what you’re really made of, what you’re capable of doing.

For Cleaners, every moment is a pressure situation, and everything is always on the line.

A Cleaner controls the pressure he feels, and he never looks to anyone else to help him control it.

A Cleaner doesn’t respond to external pressure, he puts the pressure back on the guy trying to get under his skin by refusing to acknowledge him.

So you focus only on the internal pressure that drives you. Run to it, embrace it, feel it, so no one else can throw more at you than you’ve already put on yourself.

Now everyone is watching you to see how you’re going to manage a situation that seems unmanageable. And you’d better be able to figure it out fast.

confidence means recognizing something isn’t working and having the flexibility and knowledge to make adjustments; cockiness is the inability to admit when something isn’t working, and repeating the same mistakes over and over because you stubbornly can’t admit you’re wrong.

Nothing feels risky to a Cleaner; whatever happens, he’ll know what to do.

How quickly can you make that adjustment if you take the wrong step? Can you recognize the mistake and snap it back? You have to be willing to fail if you’re going to trust yourself to act from the gut, and then adapt as you go. That’s the confidence or swagger that allows you to take risks and know that whatever happens, you’ll figure it out. Adapt, and adapt again.

You want to know a true sign of a Cleaner? He feels no pressure when he screws up and has no problem admitting when he’s wrong and shouldering the blame: When a Cooler makes a mistake, he’ll give you a lot of excuses but no solutions. When a Closer makes a mistake, he finds someone else to blame. When a Cleaner makes a mistake, he can look you in the eye and say, “I fucked up.”

The ability to put your hands up and say, “Yep, my fault,” is the greatest way to stop the pressure. Now you only have one objective: resolve the issue.

. the more educated you become, the more you heighten your ability to adapt to situations because experience gives you a better understanding of nuance, the tiny details no one else would think of or recognize as important.

But regardless of how you build that team—any team, in sports or business or any endeavor—no matter how you snap the pieces into place, you need that one guy who never needs a fire lit under him, who commands respect and fear and attention and demands that others bring the same excellence to their performance that he demands of himself. He doesn’t have to be the most skilled or gifted guy on the team, but he establishes an example that everyone else can follow.

The only way you can light other people on fire is to be lit yourself, from the inside. Professional, cool, focused. If you had a bad night and you can’t show up the next day ready to go, or you can’t show up at all, that doesn’t affect just you, it affects everyone around you.

People who preach inner drive are dreamers with a lot of ideas and a lot of talk, and zero production. They tell you everything they’re going to do, and then they do nothing. That’s inner drive.

Passion: a strong feeling or emotion for something or someone. Very nice. Now what? Are you just feeling it, or are you going to do something about it? I love hearing motivational speakers tell people to “follow your passion.” Follow it? How about work at it. Excel at it. Demand to be the best at it. Follow it? Eh.

Good things come to those who wait. No, good things come to those who work.

What’s your plan? Everything starts with a simple thought. Every idea, every invention, every plan, every creation . . . it started with a thought. But to bring the thought to life, you have to put a plan together.

You don’t become unstoppable by following the crowd, you get there by doing something better than anyone else can do it, and proving every day why you’re the best at what you do.

I’ll tell a player, “In order for you to reach your highest ability, this is going to be your number one focus. I want to make you excellent at this one thing. You can be average and above average at the other things, but when people talk about someone who can do this, you’re going to be the first name on the list.”

People get paid a fortune for being the expert at one thing, so that anytime others need that one thing done, you’re the only one they’re calling.

Figure out what you do, then do it. And do it better than anyone else.

And then let everything else you do build around that; stay with what you know.

Interesting how the guy with the most talent and success spent more time working out than anyone else.

But it’s still not easy, and Kobe makes that decision, every day, to do the work. Again: the most talented guy working harder than anyone else. It’s a choice.

Pain comes in all sorts of disguises—physical, mental, emotional. Do you need to be pain-free? Or can you push past it and stand by your commitment and decision to go further? It’s your choice. The outcome is on you.

Most guys, on the day they’re drafted, go out to celebrate. Kobe went to the gym to practice.

You cannot understand what it means to be relentless until you have struggled to possess something that’s just out of your reach. Over and over, as soon as you touch it, it moves farther away. But something inside you—that killer instinct—makes you keep going, reaching, until you finally grab it and fight with all your might to keep holding on.

People who start at the top never understand what they missed at the bottom. The guy who started by sorting the mail, or cleaning the restaurant late at night, or fixing the equipment at the gym, that’s the guy who knows how things get done.

He didn’t work on being flashy, he worked on being consistent, and he worked on it relentlessly. Cleaners don’t care about instant gratification; they invest in the long-term payoff.

Anyone can start something. Few can finish.

Trust me: privilege is a poison unless you know how to manage it.

Shoe deals and commercials don’t make you an icon. Being unstoppable makes you an icon. And being unstoppable only comes with hard work.

Cleaner Law: When you’re going through a world of pain, you never hide. You show up to work ready to go, you face adversity and your critics and those who judge you, you step into the Zone and perform at that top level when everyone is expecting you to falter. That’s being a professional.

Sorry, there’s no off-season when you’re serious about being a winner. But, hey, you can enjoy that off-season permanently when you’re cut by the team.

The loudest guy in the room is the one with the most to prove, and no way to prove it. A Cleaner has no need to announce his presence; you’ll know he’s there by the way he carries himself, always cool and confident.

When people start broadcasting what they’re going to do, and how great they’re going to be when they do it, it’s a sure sign they’re still trying to convince themselves.

The way you conduct yourself in all areas of your life, your ability to show intelligence and class and self-control . . . those are the things that separate you from the rest of the pack.

Being feared doesn’t mean being a jerk. I want you to carry yourself so you can be respected, not exposed as an insecure jackass who big-times others so he can feel better about himself.

A true Cleaner is at his lowest soon after he reaches his highest.

Win or lose, all he thinks about is how he could have done it better or smoother or faster or some way other than how he did it. So the job gets done, but he’s still always thinking about how he could have done more.