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July 6 - July 7, 2024
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.
They understood that while most of the examples in this book are about elite athletes, it’s the mind-sets of those athletes that allow them to dominate, not their physical skills.
To be clear: one great performance—or even a great season—doesn’t make you a Cleaner; you’re supposed to play well, that’s your responsibility. It’s the ability to repeat that result over and over, season after season, never satisfied, never letting up, that makes someone truly relentless. Working through physical challenges that would put others on the bench just so you can taste the sweetness of winning one more time—that is what separates the good and great from the unstoppable.
To be the best, whether in sports or business or any other aspect of life, it’s never enough to just get to the top; you have to stay there, and then you have to climb higher, because there’s always someone right behind you trying to catch up.
Most people are willing to settle for “good enough.” But if you want to be unstoppable, those words mean nothing to you. Being the best means engineering your life so you never stop until you get what you want, and then you keep going until you get what’s next. And then you go for even more.
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.
It’s time to stop listening to what everyone else says about you, telling you what to do, how to act, how you should feel. Let them judge you by your results, and nothing else; it’s none of their business how you get where you’re going. If you’re relentless, there is no halfway, no could or should or maybe.
amen.
Being relentless means demanding more of yourself than anyone else could ever demand of you, knowing that every time you stop, you can still do more. You must do more.
If you’re aiming to be the best at what you do, you can’t worry about whether your actions will upset other people, or what they’ll think of you. We’re taking all the emotion out of this, and doing whatever it takes to get to where you want to be.
You’re not competing with anyone else, ever again. They’re going to have to compete with you.
That’s how great teams lose: the leader doesn’t show up. It happens in business every day, when the boss shows his frustration in meetings or snaps at his employees.
He knew it was on him to get back in the Zone, that deeply personal space where you can quiet your mind until you have no thoughts, it’s just you and your instincts, focused and unemotional. Where you feel no external pressure, just the internal pressure to prove yourself, over and over, because you want it for yourself, not anyone else.
You want to be the best? Then you ignore the pain and the exhaustion and the pressure to please everyone else. You don’t let your enemies take your balls, you don’t let them set up shop in your head. When all hell breaks loose on the outside, you barely notice; you’re calm on the inside because you’re ready, prepared, and the best at what you do. You don’t tell anyone how you’re going to handle the situation, you just handle it.
We learned from each other. We never saw obstacles or problems, we only saw situations in need of solutions. And since there had never been a player like Michael Jordan, we encountered a lot of situations without known solutions. We learned, we made mistakes, we learned from our mistakes. We kept learning.
It’s about finding the gear that gets you to the next level . . . even when the next level doesn’t yet exist.
“In order to have what you really want, you must first be who you really are.”
Being relentless means never being satisfied. It means creating new goals every time you reach your personal best. If you’re good, it means you don’t stop until you’re great. If you’re great, it means you fight until you’re unstoppable.
If you want to be great, deliver the unexpected. If you want to be the best, deliver a miracle.
Remember, it’s not about talent or brains or wealth. It’s about the relentless instinctive drive to do whatever it takes—anything—to get to the top of where you want to be, and to stay there.
That’s what champions do; they put people in place to get results and make everyone else around them look better.
you train like a pro by committing to work at the highest level of intensity, every moment, in everything you do, constantly working on your body, your skills, your preparation, leaving no detail to chance.
The fact is, you can’t train your body—or excel at anything—before you train your mind. You can’t commit to excellence until your mind is ready to take you there. Teach the mind to train the body.
but you can’t measure commitment, persistence, or the instinctive power of the muscle in your chest, your heart.
I’m not telling you to love it. I’m telling you to crave the result so intensely that the work is irrelevant.
In the early days, I trained only Michael; later we added some Bulls teammates. Michael used to say, “I don’t pay you to train me, I pay you not to train anyone else.” He didn’t want anyone else to get that edge.
what you have to do for yourself. Bottom line if you want success of any kind: you have to be comfortable being uncomfortable. Every time you think you can’t, you have to do it anyway. That last mile, the last set, the last five minutes on the clock. You have to play the last game of the season with the same intensity as you played the first. When your body is screaming and depleted and telling you, “No way, asshole,” you work harder and tell yourself, “Do it. Now.”
My goal is to make it so challenging in the gym that everything that happens outside the gym seems easy. The work is about testing yourself and preparing all your options, so when you’re performing, there’s nothing to think about. Do the work before you need it, so you know what you’re capable of doing when everyone else hits that panic button and looks at you.
But that fear component is a powerful obstacle, and often when we first get started, these guys are just scared to move. For the first time in their lives, they can’t rely on their physical abilities or control their own motion, and now they’re afraid of their own bodies. It’s one of the biggest obstacles to recovery; they no longer want to move.
Small moves to rebuild your confidence. The small moves eventually add up to big changes. Every two or three days, we’re going a little farther out on the limb, trying a little more, making progress.
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.
I know it’s not easy, but you can’t stay in your comfort zone and expect results. Challenge yourself. Don’t be afraid to be uncomfortable. We can’t help people committed to failure.
Maybe I’ll mention what another player did . . . and pull out that button for you. I’ll repeat something I heard from the coach . . . another button ready to go. After an unbelievable performance, I’ll ask what you did last night, because you need to do that again before the next game. Or I’ll tell you I’m going back to the hotel to pack your bags because you’re playing as if you’ve already left town. More buttons. Then I’ll have someone get aggressive with you during a workout . . . and boom. That was the button you hit, and for the next hour, you can’t be stopped. Now you’re in the Zone, and
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And the only way for him to get it back is if (a) something major and catastrophic happens to jolt him back there, or (b) he’s so unapologetic about what happened that he doesn’t care what anyone thinks or how it looks. Now he’s the walking dead with nothing to lose, which makes him one of the most dangerous predators imaginable.
When you’re a Cleaner in the Zone, you operate with no wasted motion, no chaos, no warning. You don’t tell anyone what’s about to happen, it just happens. You may not even remember how it happened, but you know it did; as Kobe says, you know you’re in the Zone but you can’t think about it, because thinking is a distraction. Every movement has a purpose, and you know exactly what that purpose is; you’re never killing time or going through the motions.
On a team, in business, in any group, you’ll have those who are there for the paycheck, and those who understand the mission. As in an intricate military operation, everything has a reason and a result. A Cleaner operates out of pure desire for that result because he knows he must execute or fail. There is no other way.
You can control your own space, reconnect with your instincts, and refocus your energy in a lot of ways.
If one thing separated Michael from every other player, it was his stunning ability to block out everything and everyone else. Nothing got to him; he was ice. No matter what else was going on—the crowds, the media, the death of his father—when he stepped onto that basketball court, he was able to shut out everything except his mission to attack and conquer. I’ve never seen another player form such a perfect boundary around himself, where nothing goes in except what he brings with him.
All Cleaners have that slow-burning, blue-hot internal anger, and it works if they can control and maintain it. But it never becomes blind rage, and it’s never allowed to become destructive.
They make you think about how you feel, and you’re not supposed to think, you’re supposed to be so well prepared that you slide into the Zone and perform with grace and purpose. Not possible if your mind is on other things.
I want you in a routine, and I don’t want that routine to vary, whether it’s a meaningless preseason exhibition or the championship game of the Finals. Do what you do every day, so you never have to account for your environment or the situation. Everything stays the same. If it’s the night before the game, you have to be able to say, “Okay, I’ve done everything to get myself to this point, I’m ready.” And then enjoy the evening with the family or friends or whomever you enjoy being with, doing whatever you enjoy doing.
You know what’s coming, you know it’s supposed to be scary. Do you scream? Do you panic? Or do you stay calm and fearless because you know you can handle whatever happens next? The difference is what sets you apart from those who give in to the fear and can’t control how they feel.
Can you be reasonably successful by just following directions and staying within the lines? Sure. That’s what most people do. But if we’re talking about being elite, if you want to be unstoppable, you have to learn to put aside everything you’ve been taught, all the restrictions and limitations, the negativity and doubt. If that sounds complicated and confusing, let me make it simple: You have to stop thinking. It’s so basic. Are you good at what you do? Maybe even great at what you do? Can you be the best? Yes? If you said no, I’ll give you a moment to change your answer. Again: Can you be
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Anytime you take natural instinct and try to change it, you’re going to have a problem. You can build on it, add to it, improve it, but you cannot tame it. There’s a difference between training and taming. You can train people to reach higher and be better and go further than they would on their own. But taming means training them to be something less.
Excellent coaching advice.
You don’t have to think about whether those reflexes will come through, they just always do. That’s how I want you to envision instinct. No thinking. Just the gut reaction that comes from being so ready, so prepared, so confident, that there’s nothing to think about.
Some of the greatest athletes in any sport can’t fight the need to overthink. They study all the film, watch the same replays over and over and over, break down every motion to analyze and prepare the right response to different situations. That’s a Closer, learning how to react to someone else’s action, waiting for the right moment to respond. But what if that moment doesn’t arrive? What if the opponent does the unexpected and goes in a different direction?
Now the Closer has lost his feel for the actual game. He’s so completely determined to recognize something he saw on film, waiting for that specific situation, trying to remember all the right answers. Instead of playing his own game, he’s playing the other guy’s game. Reacting instead of acting. Overthinking. Overanalyzing. That’s how you lose the natural ability that made you great in the first place.
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.
Like all Cleaners, he didn’t study the competition, he made the competition study him. Other guys sat there analyzing and contemplating what might happen; he didn’t have to. He knew his skills and knowledge were so finely tuned that he could dominate any situation; he worked so long and hard that his body and mind reflexively knew what to do at all times.
But real learning doesn’t mean clinging to the lessons. It means absorbing everything you can and then trusting yourself to use what you know instantaneously, without thinking. Instinctive, not impulsive . . . quick, not hurried. Knowing without a doubt that all the hours of work have created an unstoppable internal resource you can draw on in any situation. Having the maturity and experience to know who you are and how you got to the top, and the mental toughness to stay there.
He watches a ton of video, breaks down every shot . . . but he also works relentlessly on what he learns from that video. That’s a Cleaner, not just learning but taking what you’ve learned and creating ways to improve on it. Every action becomes instinctive if you’re willing to put the time and sweat into building your arsenal of spontaneous responses. Especially for a veteran player, who knows his maturity and experience and seasoned instinct are priceless compared to that of a kid with fresh legs and a ten-cent head.
