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

by Tim S. Grover

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.

highly successful people rarely get to hear the truth; they’re surrounded by assistants and security and aides and the PHDs who go to tremendous lengths to keep their place in the circle of trust by managing the truth, shoveling polite opinions and puffy compliments, and generally keeping the boss happy.

Don’t even answer, I already know. You need a thirty-day program. If you don’t do it, your career is over. You don’t want to do it? Up to you. But you need it.

You can’t make things better until you stop making things worse.

No is a closed door, no negotiation. Someone asks you to do something you don’t want to do, and you 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.

Whether you’re an athlete, an entrepreneur, a CEO, a rock star, or you’re just starting out in life, know what you know, and what you don’t know. Most of the time when we ask for advice, we don’t want the truth. We want the answer we’re seeking. Be open to advice that goes against what you want.

Cleaners trust few people; they’d almost always rather follow their instincts and fix the situation later if they’re wrong, than trust someone else and kick themselves for not listening to that voice inside. 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.

If you don’t succeed at everything you do on your first attempt, does that mean you “failed”? Isn’t it a good thing that you keep coming back and working at it until you succeed? How can that be failure?

Cleaner Law: if your name is on the door, you’d better control what goes on behind that door. Right away, the critics pounced on the team’s poor

If something doesn’t go as planned, he instinctively looks for options to make things work a different way.

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 never know how bad you want it until you get that first bitter taste of not getting it, but once you taste it, you’re going to fight like hell to get that bitterness out of your mouth.

A Cleaner can’t ever accept that it’s over. But he does recognize when it’s time to change direction.

But to become the best, I had to learn a lot of lessons about always being prepared to change direction, and refusing to get sucked into other people’s opinions of what it means to succeed or fail.

That’s how I learned: Don’t try. Do.

You take what everyone else sees as a negative and turn it to your advantage.

Success is about doing things that no one else can do.

Word

You can be good by playing it safe. You can’t be relentless unless you’re willing to take chances. Safe makes you good, chances make you great.

A Cleaner knows when to walk away, and which direction to walk. Never running, always walking; he leaves smoothly and on his own terms. He can lose a battle because he’s still planning to win the war. Lose a game, but win the season.

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

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.

That’s the relentless pursuit of excellence, always believing in your ability, demanding more of yourself than anyone else could ever ask of you.

enormity

THe great or extreme scale

negative. “Thirty points, ten assists . . . damn, two turnovers.” And that’s

drive to close the gap between near-perfect and perfect is the difference

he has one focus and I have one focus: our shared addiction to winning. And everything we do is about that one objective.

never overlook the details, and I’ll make sure you don’t either.

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.

Usually, only one thing can bring him back: the competitive spirit, the idea that someone else is about to take what’s his, the realization that while he was content to get fat and lazy, everyone else was still lean and hungry. Then he has to get busy playing catch-up, or he won’t be the champ for long.

You don’t have to love it. You just have to be insatiable for the results.

You give me a situation, I will make it work. That’s what drives me. A new challenge every time, a new way to do things better than we did before.

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.

Only you can turn those dreams into reality. Never stop until you do.

I truly believe I have zero limitations. You should believe the same about yourself. Listen to your instincts. They’re telling you the truth.

Everything you want can be yours. Be a Cleaner and go get it. Be relentless. Done. Next.