From 600+ conversations with the world’s leading thinkers.
The greatest performances arise from people who feel inspired. Athletes and leaders alike need to create lives that inspire them. We constantly strive to feel inspired and we feel the need to contribute fully.
Sports taught me that, rather than be blind followers of rules, we need to constantly question them as to their purpose and validity and be bold enough to change them if they don't serve our value of fair play.
This might sound strange, but I've never been 'afraid.' I've certainly been nervous- very nervous- but I've never been afraid. That's what has allowed me to come back from injuries- I'm not afraid of the consequences. I know the risks, I accept the risks, but I'm not afraid of the risks.
Building mental fitness is akin to being an elite athlete. It's not enough for the athletes just to have great technical skills, they need to be equally mentally prepared also.
Martial arts is my greatest passion in life, and it has given me everything: my values, my family, my business, and my true calling. It has given me a warrior's spirit to conquer adversities in life.
I earn my living from coaching people how to fight… it may come as a surprise, therefore, to learn that until I was in my early twenties, I was terrified of fighting. I hated arguing, shouting, violence – all forms of conflict, basically. That's not unusual, of course, but to be honest, I was a bit of a wimp – or, as some of the kids in school liked to tell me, a pussy.
My approach is always to redirect their focus from this nebulous concept of confidence to the concrete tasks at hand. These are tasks they have successfully completed numerous times. Whether they feel confident or not is irrelevant; the real key is maintaining focus in the moment.
We compete not to just make up the numbers, but to do it right, with a full programme to achieve success on the track and meet all our other measures of success, too.
The more you do it – the more you build a mental scar tissue that you can lean on – That's the 'stuff' that lets you pick up the pieces and go again.
A practitioner is the person who goes out and breaks the limits of the mind, the soul, the body. A practitioner listens, and understands that the voices who say things cannot be done are theorists.
I came to the conclusion that clubs would be better of promoting strategies that induce home-advantage rather than fighting for higher ticket price because the incremental value of each point lost is higher than the value of those more expensive tickets. If you drive your home advantage, your revenues go up!
For thousands of years, sport has existed alongside religion as the pre-eminent medium through which social bonding takes place, and in contemporary culture football has become the pre-eminent sport of the world.