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January 12 - January 12, 2021
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.
“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 philosophy came from my Dad. He told me that I should never try to be better than someone else. But, he also said that I should never stop trying to be the very best that I could be. ‘You have control over that,’ he said. ‘You don’t have control over others.’
“They learned to love the process of practicing hard. They learned to love the process of getting better every day. They learned to love the process of putting the team’s interests above their own. They learned to love the process of competing with themselves instead of comparing themselves to others.
“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.”
Here’s another reason why doing what you love is so important: if you don’t love what you do, you’re going to get beat by somebody who does!
“What good does bitterness ever do anyone?” he asked. “Hatred does nothing but harden your heart. It only hurts you. I’d rather live by love. Loving others and loving what you do. That’s the only way worth living.”
“Isn’t this fun?” I repeated. “The game is on the line and you have the ball in your hands. This is the type of moment everyone always dreams about when they’re kids. This is why you wanted to be a quarterback. Now, you get to live it. It’s moments like this that make us all love this great game. Isn’t this fun?!”
“The truth is, when you choose safety and security, you’re usually choosing complacency. And when you fall into complacency, you lower your expectations and you give up your biggest dreams. When you settle for mediocrity, you end up with even less. When your goal is to simply survive, you’ll never thrive.”
“Remember this,” he said. “At any given time, you’re either moving forward or you’re moving backward. There is no in-between. There’s no such thing as maintaining the status quo. It never works. As soon as you stop trying to move forward and you set your sights on maintaining, you start slipping backwards. You’re either playing to win or playing not to lose.”
It’s amazing what you can achieve when you start focusing on the reasons why you can do something instead of the reasons why you can’t.”
“But I believe most miracles happen from within. They start inside us. They start with a dream, a belief that it can be done, followed by extremely hard work and perseverance.
“But without the dream first, the miracle will never happen.”
“It is sort of like that. Most people have no idea how much pressure they can take, how many obstacles they can withstand, how many times they can get knocked down and still get back up. They don’t realize how far they can be pushed because they place mental limits on themselves. They quit before they ever come close to reaching their true potential.
That’s why I always liked undersized, scrappier kids. I knew they had something to prove. I knew they had been told over and over again that they didn’t have what it took, but they refused to believe it.
mental toughness is a choice you make. It’s not some gift that some people have and some don’t. It’s a choice. And the choices a man makes become a habit. Unfortunately, most people choose to get in the habit of quitting.”
“I used to tell people, ‘If anything goes bad, I did it. If anything goes semi-good, we did it. If anything goes real good, you did it.’ That’s what being a leader means. The buck stops with you when there are problems. No excuses. No blaming others.”
I’m telling you, it works. Take your anger and use it as motivation to make yourself so good that he can’t deny you what you earn. Take your anger and use it to your advantage!”
“A positive attitude won’t prevent you from facing obstacles. What a positive attitude will do is help you blast through those obstacles.
everybody gets knocked down, but champions choose to get back up. They choose to never back down and never stop trying.
winning is not everything, but making the effort to win is. I was trying to say that the will to win is everything. I meant that giving everything you’ve got to achieve a worthy goal is what’s most important. I sure as hell didn’t mean people should crush human values or do immoral things to win.
the will to win and the will to excel are more important than the results that follow.
1. I focus on only the things I have total control over: my effort and my attitude. 2. I love what I do and I attack each day with joy and enthusiasm. 3. I dream big and I ignore the naysayers. 4. I am relentless and I will NEVER give up on my dreams. 5. I choose faith over fear.
