Mind Gym: An Athlete's Guide to Inner Excellence

Discipline. It means doing what you have to do when you need to do it, whether you want to or not.

Talent is never enough. With few exceptions the best players are the hardest workers. —MAGIC JOHNSON

You have the responsibility to shape your life. You are the person who pushes yourself forward or holds yourself back. The power to succeed or fail is yours alone.

Don’t look where you don’t want to go.

Do you know how gemologists tell a fake emerald from a real one? The fakes are perfect. Real emeralds have flaws. None of us is perfect.

Michael Jordan calls fear an illusion. He and many other great athletes learn to turn fear into anger. You can run from fear, or you can get angry and attack it. If you challenged Jordan’s pride he wouldn’t be afraid. He used that energy to become more aggressive. Good athletes take fear of failure and turn it around.

It is said that 10 percent of life is what happens to us and 90 percent is how we choose to react to it.

The desire to succeed needs to be stronger than the fear of failure.

Competitive golf is played mainly on a five-and-a-half-inch course: the space between your ears. —BOBBY JONES

When you are under stress, deep breathing helps bring your mind and body back into the present.

Sports teach us how to persevere. How to deal with adversity. How to become part of a single heartbeat that defines a team. Sports teach lessons in leadership, respect, and courage.

Learn from the past. Prepare for the future. Perform in the present.

Optimists have a positive expectancy that helps them achieve their goals. Theirs is a can-do attitude. They take action, which is empowering. Pessimists take a passive attitude. They play the blame game or focus on what they can’t do. As a result, pessimists often become victims of self-fulfilling prophecy.

You can’t buy motivation. You can’t obtain it from someone else. “Motivation is something nobody else can give you,” Joe DiMaggio said. “Others can help motivate you, but basically it must come from you, and it must be a constant desire to do your very best at all times and under any circumstances.

The probability of achieving the outcome you want increases when you let go of the need to have it.

Doubts can be paralyzing. Confidence and trust are essential in every sport.

This place has got a rhythm to it. It's like a heart beating. Buh-bump. In forty-five minutes our guys will come out for batting practice. Then the vendors will start showing up. Buh-bump. Buh-bump. And the fans will start to arrive, and the other team will come in, and you can see them over there in the dugout. Buh-bump-buh-bump-buh-BUMP. Then the lights go on and the umpires step onto the field and they play the national anthem. - And in his mind's eye, Lefebvre could see it, and feel it, as surely as he could feel his own pulse, the baseball game, a living, breathing thing.

We all want to win. Every athlete wants to succeed. But the ones who do are those who separate wanting from being willing to make the sacrifice that winning demands.

Nothing stands between us and success but our will to win.

It’s a lack of faith that makes people afraid of meeting challenges, and I believe in myself,” Ali said. Also, “To be a great champion you must believe you are the best. If you’re not, pretend you are.

In truth, life is based upon failures. If you don’t fail, you’re probably not challenging yourself enough.

Be the dream. —JOHN CHANEY

Pete Rose said it this way: “What’s tough is to go out and work hard on the things that you don’t do very well.

Only climbers get to the top.

You have to train your mind like you train your body. —BRUCE JENNER

Ninety percent of the game is half mental. —YOGI BERRA

The paradox is that sometimes you have to get worse before you get better.

Competitors take bad breaks and use them to drive themselves just that much harder. Quitters take bad breaks and use them as reasons to give up.

To get the head edge, try creating your own mind gym. You always can do mental practice, even when you are physically tired or injured. Make your images as vivid and as clear as you can. See yourself overcoming mistakes, and imagine yourself doing things well. Remember, confidence comes from knowing you are mentally and physically prepared.