Think Like a Warrior: The Five Inner Beliefs That Make You Unstoppable (Sports for the Soul Book 1)

by Darrin Donnelly

Success is a choice. Whether you succeed or fail is primarily determined by the beliefs you choose to hold about yourself and the world around you.

Numerous studies confirm that a person’s mindset determines the type of life a person lives.

Whether you are happy and successful or frustrated and miserable is a r...

And your mindset is determined by your inner beliefs—beliefs that you...

When you think like a warrior, there’s nothing that can stop you from achieving your goals.

How could I get my players to follow me into battle with everyone around our program slamming me and questioning my judgement?

“Things aren’t always fair in this world,” Coach Wooden said calmly.

“Things aren’t always going to go your way. That’s life. I see so much self-inflicted pain and stress caused by people who think they’re entitled to having

everything go their way. They think everything should always be fair. But that’s not ...

“It’s actually quite liberating when you accept this...

“How freeing it is to stop stressing

over things you can’t control.

It frees you up to give your full attention to the things you can control. And how you handle the things you can control determin...

“What I’m saying is that those wins were a result of me and the team’s relentless focus on only the things we did have control over.

Winning was not something I or my players could completely control, so we tried not to focus on it.

“But, I tried not to talk about winning and losing with my team. To be honest, I rarely even talked about the opponents we were facing. I did this because I wanted to keep the focus on only what

we had total control over. We focused on ourselves, doing what we had to do, getting our team better. We let other teams worry about us while we only worried about ourselves.

“This was the difference-maker. I taught my players that being successful had nothing to with the final score. Success could only be measured by whether you put in the maximum effort.

You could lose on the scoreboard and still be successful if you gave your absolute best effort.

You could also win on the scoreboard and be unsuccessful if you d...

Regardless of ...

final score says, only you can know if you’re successful because only you can know if...

“By focusing on only the things you can control, it also forces you to think, live, and act in the present moment. This is so important. People waste way too much time and energy thinkin...

“It was the process we focused on, not the results. Why? Because we have total control over the process. The results, on

the other hand, aren’t always in our control.”

“It does indeed,” Coach Wooden said. “Every coach, leader, teacher, student, entrepreneur, manager, and parent should embrace this philosophy.

when you focus on only those things and let the results take care of themselves,

“Remember, when people get so engrossed in the things they have no control over, it negatively effects the things they do have control over.

Focus everything you’ve got on what you can control: your effort and attitude in the present moment.”

“Success is not something others can give you,” Wooden said. “True success can only be attained by knowing you did your very best to become the best you’re capable of becoming. That is how I define success. I don’t care what the scoreboard says, what your record ends up being at the end of the season, or what your job title is. If you give your best, you will be a success.”

These were the questions I’d been agonizing over for the past several months and now I realized that each and every one of them was something I did not have control over.

Our focus needs to be on doing the things that will lead us to winning, not the winning itself.

From this point forward, I want the focus of every man in this room to be on only the things you can control: your effort and your attitude in the present moment.”

Everyone was excited to start showing what his best effort looked like.

“Maximum effort, baby, maximum effort.”

“Nothing but your absolute best.” “Effort and attitude, effort and attitude.”

If a person is so stressed out about what will happen if the results they achieve aren’t satisfactory, they can’t let loose and play their best.

They tighten up. They get so worried about the things they can’t control that they end up making

mistakes with the things they...

I focus on only the things I have total control over.

“Effort and attitude, Jimmy. Effort and attitude. That’s all you can control.”

If we’re judging ourselves on

only what we can control—our effort and our attitude—then we had been successful.

“Everybody has to deal with things like that. I want to know why you think you’re entitled to be so upset and bitter about it.”

“And back then, whenever the roads needed work done, the county would round up a bunch of young black men, charge them with vagrancy, and put them on chain gangs for a few months, until the road work was done.

And black people weren’t allowed to attend our town’s high school. It was for white kids only. We couldn’t go to school after the eighth grade. My point is, black people weren’t treated fairly.

But my mother didn’t let that stop her from wanting something better. She started her own restaurant and encouraged us to ...

‘There is something better than this. But you can’t find it here. You’re going to have to go out and get it.’

“When my dad said that to me, it was a turning point in my life. He made me realize that the world wasn’t going to hand me the life I wanted to live. I had to decide what I wanted out of life and then go get it myself!

“No, no, no,” Buck said. “You’ve got it all wrong. You can’t blame anything outside of you for taking away your joy. Only you can take the joy out of your life.