Jim Afremow - The Leaders Mind: How Great Leaders Prepare, Perform, and Prevail

Dr. Jim Afremow is a much sought-after mental skills coach, licensed professional counselor, cocreator of the Champions Mind app, and the author of The Champions Mind: How Great Athletes Think, Train and Thrive (Rodale, 2014), The Champions Comeback: How Great Athletes Recover, Reflect, and Reignite (Rodale, 2016), and The Young Champions Mind: How to Think, Train, and Thrive Like an Elite Athlete (Rodale, 2018).

Though his practice is located in Eugene, Oregon, Jim provides individual and group mental skills training and leadership services across the globe to athletes, teams, and coaches in all sports, as well as to parents, business professionals, and all others engaged in highly demanding endeavors. He is passionate about helping others achieve peak performance and personal excellence, and live a gold medal life.

For more than twenty-five years, Jim has assisted numerous high school, collegiate, and professional athletes and coaches. Major sports organizations represented include MLB, NBA, WNBA, PGA Tour, LPGA Tour, NHL, NFL, and the UFC. In addition, he has worked closely with scores of US and international Olympians. He served as the staff mental coach for two international Olympic teams, the Greek Olympic softball team and Indias Olympic field hockey team. He served as a senior staff member with Counseling Services at Arizona State University and as the peak performance coordinator with the San Francisco Giants MLB organization.

Jim resides in Eugene with his wife, Anne, and their daughter, Maria Paz. He loves spending time with his family and hitting a little white ball around a field.

Keep in touch with Jim via the web:

Website: https://www.goldmedalmind.net/

Twitter: http://www.twitter.com/goldmedalmind

Instagram: https://instagram.com/jimafremow/

Phil White has been writing stories for as long as he can remember. Among his fourteen books, he is the coauthor of Waterman 2.0 with Kelly Starrett, The 17 Hour Fast with Dr. Frank Merritt, Unplugged with Andy Galpin and Brian Mackenzie, Game Changer with Fergus Connolly, and The Align Method with Aaron Alexander. Phil received an Emmy nomination for his Kansas City history collaboration with award-winning director Greg Sheffer. As well as writing books together, he and Jim Afremow have teamed up with entrepreneur Dave Kearney to create The Champions Mind app, which is used by pro, college, high school, and club teams across the globe.

Phil also collaborates with a select group of high-performance brands, including Momentous, TD Athletes Edge, Fusion Sport, and TrainingPeaks. In a previous life, he wrote A Lion in the Heartland, which tells the story of how Winston Churchill ended up in the middle of Missouri to deliver his Iron Curtain Speech, and Whistle Stop, which chronicles the unlikely comeback of President Harry Truman in the 1948 election. When not writing, Phil can be found hiking and paddleboarding with his wife and editor, Nicole (who is also a fashion designer), and his two sons/budding filmmakers, Johnny and Harry, in the wilds of Colorado.

Follow Phil on Instagram @philwhitebooks and keep up with his books, podcasts, and articles at philwhitebooks.com and https://www.clippings.me/philwhitebooks.

FROM JIM AFREMOW

Once again, I have been blessed with many special people to thank.

To my superstar wife, Anne, and our wonderful daughter, Maria Paz, for lovingly supporting and inspiring me during the time and duties that this book required.

To Phil White for being a true leader and a five-star teammate on this project. Your interviewing skills and writing abilities are truly world-class. Thanks a million for making the entire process such a blast.

To my incredible literary agent, Helen Adams, who championed this project every step of the way. You have a special knack for providing the right guidance in the right way at the right time, every time.

To the championship-caliber team at HarperCollins Leadership for their expertise and thoughtfulness, and for making this project really shine, all the way from conception to cover design to marketing. Specific thanks to our superb editor, Sara Kendrick, and her unbeatable teamJeff Farr, Beth Metrick, Zoe Kaplan, Aryn Van Dyke, Brittany Prescott, and Tim Burgard.

Every person interviewed in this bookNick Peters, Tammie Jo Shults, Nic Gill, Katrina Firlik, Paul Ratcliffe, and Donald Robertsongenerously contributed hours of their time and provided candid recollections about how they have prepared, performed, and prevailed in their leadership roles. We are in their debt.

FROM PHIL WHITE

Id like to thank my wife, Nicole, for editing the earliest version of this book and for her continued inspiration in writing, love, and life. People see the end result of words on a page but not the tireless hours she puts into making my waffling vaguely readable. My sons, Johnny and Harry, did a great job of keeping quiet while Jim and I were interviewing the leaders featured in this book and with adding fun into the mix when the words started to blur on the screen. My family and friends kept me going with a mixture of encouragement and support. Its a privilege to team up with a coauthor as knowledgeable, enthusiastic, and kind as Jim, who is the perfect creative partner. We mightve been able to interview some of these great leaders by ourselves, but to do so together and have someone to geek out with afterward was a true pleasure.

Speaking of our interviewees, Id like to thank Gilly, Tammie Jo, Katrina, Nick, Paul, and Donald for taking the time to share their expertise. The same goes to Daniel Lubetzky and Steve Kerr for serving as inspirations to me and many others. This book would never have come together without the stellar efforts of our agent, Helen Adams, or the vision of our editor, Sara Kendrick. Id also like to acknowledge the help of Aryn Van Dyke and her colleague Brittany, Tim Burgard, Jeff Farr, Beth Metrick, Zoe Kaplan, and the entire HarperCollins Leadership team in making The Leaders Mind look and read better. Finally, I give credit to Godthe ultimate leaderfor the blessing of making a living telling stories.

Leadership can be summed up as just be a good person.

NICK PETERS, District Fire Management Officer, United States Forest Service

H ow many of our leaders must perform at their best when death can come in an instant with a simple miscalculation of wind and terrain? Nick Peters is such a leader, having worked his way up from a grunt firefighter to a district fire management officer, leading teams across 305,000 acres of the Chattahoochee-Oconee National Forest in northern Georgia. Here is how he describes one situation in which he found himself:

I was already in place and the crew boss was nowhere around, so I grabbed a half dozen people and said, Lets go, weve got to burn this thing out. As were going, we were working just off the top of this ridge, and, as you know, fire runs uphill, then it goes downhill. The fire was coming up one side. We were just on the backside of this ridge, and we had to burn out the ridge. The containment line was down below us, maybe a hundred yards to a road. I had these firefighters, and a bunch of them were new.

They had never been in that part of the country on that big of a fire. As we were moving forward, the fire started cresting the top, and were talking fifty- to hundred-foot flames, within fifty feet of us. Because fire goes uphill and goes up in altitude, we werent feeling the heat from it, but it was right there, and it was roaring fire, and all these kids froze.

But we had to get the job done. I knew we were good, and we could outrun the fire downhill if necessary, but all these guys were frozen solid. At one point, I had to look at them and say: Hey, snap out of it! We got a job to do. Follow me. Do as I tell you to do.