Inner Excellence: Train Your Mind for Extraordinary Performance and the Best Possible Life

by Jim Murphy

We want deep, enriching experiences and meaningful relationships, a life where we’re not constantly shrinking back in fear. We want to live courageously, learning and growing, fueling a fearlessness that awakens the lives of others.

Rather than seeking fearless authenticity and personal growth directly, we pursue an illusion and get emptiness instead.

The direct pursuit means developing a new mindset and new skills, ones that lead to inner strength, peace, and confidence, independent of circumstances. Your heart may need to re-orient its bearings and redefine success by prizing something that’s more stable and powerful than your feelings or status, letting go of how society measures your life.

The quality of your life is based on three elements: Your inner world of thoughts and feelings, beliefs and desires. Your frame of reference (mindset) from which you see the world. Your relationships.

The quality of your performance is also based on three elements: Your belief about who you are and what’s possible for you. Your ability to focus and be fully engaged in the moment: heart, mind and body (note: heart and spirit will be used interchangeably). Your freedom to play like a kid, curiously exploring possibilities, excited for challenges that may arise.

Those destined for greatness must first walk alone in the desert.

How to have extraordinary poise and mental toughness under extreme pressure. How to live the best possible life, one with deep contentment, joy and confidence. In the desert I had an astonishing insight. I realized that the pursuit of extraordinary performance and the pursuit of the best possible life are the same path.

trying to be successful in order to be happy.

If we focus on improving our inner world, however, we’ll achieve far more.

heart first, performance second.

Inner world first, outer world follows.

This book will help you understand how those amazing individuals trained their minds (and oriented their hearts) so that they were always learning and growing, and how you can train your mind and heart to do the same.

A life with unlimited possibilities is only possible when the assumptions that guide our lives are also free from limits.

Every circumstance and every person you encounter is here to teach you and help you—it’s all working for your good.

Your life is a reflection of your beliefs.

Self-centeredness is the root cause of fear.

We all have the same deep needs and same deep desires.

Everyone does the best they can with what they have (in their hearts).

The map is not the territory.

You are not your mind.

The problem is not the problem, the problem is the way you’re thinking about it.

There’s no failure, only feedback.

The person with the most control of their inner world has the most power.

Your mindset is your overall attitude and way of thinking that comes from how you perceive yourself and the world.

I compete to raise the level of excellence in my life, to learn and grow, in order to raise it in others.

We don’t climb mountains to get to the top—we climb to see who we can become in trying to get there.

The biggest obstacle we face, in performance and in life, is self-centeredness.

Love is to lead with your heart, wisdom is to expand your vision, and courage is to be fully present. In this model, love becomes passion, wisdom becomes purpose, and courage becomes poise.

Real freedom is costly.

truly free, we must have the courage to conform to certain disciplines, face our fears, and connect with our true selves.

God-given talents in pursuit of false idols— chasing money or status or numbers or approval—in an attempt to quench our deep thirst to be grounded and fulfilled.

your best moments always come from a clear mind and unburdened heart.

Remove what isn’t you and, like Michelangelo unveiled David, you’ll discover tremendous strength and poise.

it’s our loves that govern our actions and the direction of our lives.

What do I dream about? What do I worry about? (What has regularly made me anxious?) What do I get upset about? (What has made me the angriest?)

you start losing perspective.

There’s always something on the horizon that lures us towards temporary rewards, distracting us from the process necessary to develop inner strength.

The price of anything, as Henry David Thoreau said, is the amount of life you exchange for it.

The greatness lies in the person you become, the one meant to make a difference in the lives of others, the one who sacrificed themselves to learn and grow and become someone they never knew they could become.

The process of learning and growing in love, wisdom and courage—to become more fully you—through all the adversity, is what makes the achievement great.

winning the battle with yourself – the battle for your heart.

focused on purpose and helping others.

What will it take to live and work with total freedom (even in the job you’re in now)?

Our thoughts become obstacles.

We need to let go of our preoccupation with self—and all the self-protective, cluttered thoughts it brings.

The root cause of fear is a virus of the heart: self-centeredness.

preoccupation with ourselves that limits our options and stunts our growth.

It’s through this biased, limited filter that we see the world, and this filter is dotted with memories of past failures.

Attachment to your past and previous failures makes you self-conscious, concerned about yourself and what others think of you.

The problem arises when the end result overshadows the process and you lose yourself along the way.