Do you focus on what you have done right or what you have done wrong? Too often, we focus on the one thing we did wrong instead of the 99 things we did right. When you focus on what you do right, it makes you a better teammate, makes you tougher, and enhances your talent. When you focus on what you do wrong, the opposite happens. 

That’s not to say you should never think about your mistakes or listen to criticism. Far from it. Learning from mistakes is a key part of growth, and constructive criticism can help you overcome hurdles on the road to success. But when you let a mistake eat at your mind after its usefulness is past, it will only hold you back. If you let it go to focus on what you did right (learning from the mistake or loss), it will propel you forward.

Pillar: Goals

Key Topics: Goals, focus forward, learning from mistakes, toughness, skill vs talent, being a good teammate

When someone tells you to do your best, does that encourage you? When you realize that you can do nothing better than your best, it can be encouraging. But for many students, and maybe for you, “do your best” isn’t encouraging because it translates to “you can’t win, so just try not to get beat too badly.”

Your opponent is not someone across from you. It’s someone within you. You are your own greatest opponent. This is especially true when we experience performance anxiety. That anxiety steals your potential and that which you can become. It holds you back from being your best.

To be a great teammate, you’ve got to make some commitments. We call these the top ten commitments of a great teammate. The ten items are each important, but if ten is a little much to remember, know that they boil down to one simple idea: WE BEFORE ME.

Character matters because character wins. Character is not a consolation prize. It’s not the thing you get because you weren’t talented enough to be a champion. It’s the thing that allows you to become a champion at all. If you want to win on the field and in life, you must win in your character first. There are three reasons this is true:

If you want to reach your goals, you must take action. Nothing will work unless you do. When you take action, you move towards your goal. And at the same time, you move away from things that will derail you from your goals, such as entitlement, unearned praise, and unsuccessful attempts.

Everyone has a responsibility. Only you can take care of your responsibilities as a student, as an athlete, or as a son or daughter. Responsibility means doing what you have been trusted to do. The moment you fail to do your job and someone else tries to do your job for you, there’s two jobs that aren’t being done. Your team counts on you to do what only you can do.

Every morning you have to make the choice to either rise and whine or rise and grind. The morning is going to come whether you like it or not, but how you choose to greet the morning will determine how the rest of your day goes. Rise and whine is all about excuses and complaining–neither of which will get you anywhere. But rise and grind is all about getting up and doing the work anyway, which is the only way to succeed.

Many student-athletes carry heavy loads. These are things that they weren’t meant to carry, yet the burden is dragging them away from their goals and dreams. These burdens are things like pressure to be perfect, fear of failure, and self-doubt. If you are carrying these things, then it’s time for you to make the swap.