Dr. Bob Rotella - How Champions Think: In Sports and in Life

Simon & Schuster

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Copyright 2015 by Robert Rotella

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First Simon & Schuster hardcover edition May 2015

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Jacket design by Christopher Sergio

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data is available.

ISBN 978-1-4767-8862-3

ISBN 978-1-4767-8865-4 (ebook)

To Dad, for being the greatest husband, father, father-in-law, grandfather, and great-grandfather any man could ever hope to be. And to his great-grandchildren, my grandchildren, Lucy, Max, Laura, Thomas, and George, and to all my nieces and nephews, wishing each of you a wonderful life, going for your dreams with passion and enthusiasm.

CONTENTS

What LeBron James Has in Common with Pat Bradley

I HAVE BEEN privileged to spend my life helping people who want to be exceptional. A desire to be exceptional may not in itself strike you as unusual. Everyone, as a kid, has daydreams in which he catches the touchdown pass as time expires to win the Super Bowl, or she pole-vaults sixteen feet to win an Olympic gold medal. But Im not talking about daydreams or about the unrealized fantasies of many adults. Im talking about a desire so fierce that it changes a persons life. Exceptional people begin with just such ambitions. From them, Ive learned how a champions thoughts are different from the thoughts of most people. That difference is what this book is about.

Ive worked with the winners of eighty-four major golf championships on the mens, womens, and senior tours. Ive worked with Olympic gold medalists in the equestrian sports. Ive worked with NCAA champions in track and field, soccer, lacrosse, and basketball. Ive worked with winners of major tennis tournaments. Three of the five players in the history of the PGA Tour to shoot a competitive 59Chip Beck, David Duval, and Jim Furykwere working with me when they did it. Ive worked with exceptionally successful people in the entertainment and business worlds. Each of them has taught me something about the minds of exceptional people.

They have confirmed my belief that the ideas people choose to have about themselves largely determine the quality of the lives they lead. We can choose to believe in ourselves, and thus to strive, to risk, to persevere, and to achieve. Or we can choose to cling to security and mediocrity. We can choose to set no limits on ourselves, to set high goals and dream big dreams. We can use those dreams to fuel our spirits with passion. Or we can become philosophers of the worst kind, inventing ways to rationalize our failures, inventing excuses for mediocrity. We can fall in love with our own abilities and our own potential, then choose to maximize those abilities. Or we can decide that we have no special talents or abilities and try to be happy being safe and comfortable.

As Ive worked, Ive been troubled at times by the realization that the champions I know are becoming more atypical too exceptional, if you will. Our grandparents and great-grandparents migrated and struggled for many years to give us the freedom we now have, a precious birthright. Were free to choose what were going to think about ourselves. No one can stop us from chasing our dreams. Yet many people today choose to squander this birthright. They choose to believe that because of where they were born or who their parents are, they dont have a fair chance in life. Theyre choosing to believe that the competitionfrom America and around the worldis just too tough. Theyre choosing to believe in someone elses talent more than their own. Theyre choosing to be mediocre.

Im always telling people that I dont care what their families or their schools or their communities said or thought about them. I tell them, Youre an adult now, and you get to decide. So whats the decision going to be? You get to write your life story. Will you be heroic or just someone trying to get by? Will you be the star or someone sitting on the end of the bench?

I have no trouble with someone who strives to be the best and finishes in the middle of the pack. Theres honor in that. I dont see that person as a failure. To the contrary, he will come to the end of his days with a smile on his face, because he spent the time and talent God gave him having a ball, finding out how good he could get. He will not be the person who goes to the grave thinking, If only Id been as talented as, say, LeBron James! My life would have been great!

In fact, such a person doesnt have an inkling of the most important talent LeBron James has. Nor does he know he could have chosen to have that talent himself. I know, because Ive heard about it from the source.

Some years ago, I got a call from Lance Blanks, who was then the assistant general manager of the NBAs Cleveland Cavaliers. Id known Lance since his days as a basketball player for the University of Virginia, where I taught and helped the athletic program as a sports psychologist. Lance wanted to know if I would spend a day talking with LeBron, then (and now again) the cornerstone of Clevelands franchise. I was happy to say yes.

I knew something about LeBron, of course. I knew the outer dimensions. He was six-eight, weighed two hundred fifty chiseled pounds, and had explosive speed. I knew he had been perhaps the most publicized high school basketball player since Kareem Abdul-Jabbar was known as Lew Alcindor. I knew hed been the NBAs number one draft choice the year he finished high school and I knew hed been a very successful professional for the Cavaliers. But until I had a chance to talk to him, I didnt know the most important thing about LeBron.

I want to be the greatest basketball player in history, he told me.

Beautiful, I thought. This is a truly talented guy.

It was not that he had the physical gifts. It was LeBrons mind.

Ive been encountering his kind of attitude on occasion for more than three decades, and when I have encountered it, I have almost always had the pleasure of working with someone truly exceptional. One of my first clients in this category was someone who could hardly have been physically more different from LeBron, professional golfer Pat Bradley. Pat had average size and average clubhead speed; nothing about her initial appearance would suggest athletic ability to most people. And that was not even the most significant difference. LeBron had been a prodigy of whom much was expected from the time he was maybe fourteen years old. Pat had grown up in golfing obscurity. She was a girl from New England, which is not a cradle of golfers because of the short golf season up north. She hadnt gone to one of the colleges that traditionally has a strong womens golf team. LeBron would have disappointed a lot of people if he hadnt made himself into a great basketball player. Pat, had she been mediocre, would only have confirmed peoples expectations. When I met her, shed been a professional golfer for eleven years, and shed won one tournament.