“The requirement for concentration is what sets deliberate practice apart from both mindless routine performance and playful engagement. While hard work is instrumental to success, it is simply not enough.”

“Start noticing when you’re replaying that horrible scene for the 3rd or 300th time and see if you can observe yourself watching it. See yourself third row from back in a theater, watching your movie. And then ask yourself, is this really the movie we want to watch again?”

The point is to get in touch with something that makes you feel great, but not to let yourself starve or be stopped by a fear that you’ll fail, by a fear that it can’t be done.

“Give yourself the emotional permission to spend time on those things today that will create more time tomorrow. Remember, this is like planting seeds.” - Rory Vaden, Procrastinate On Purpose

“We may not all be likely to climb into a burning vehicle to save an accident victim, but each of us has the potential to face down our own psychological demons, overcome them, and get on with the business of living.” - Robert Biswas-Diener.

“Winning is never impossible - just look at the sports page of the newspaper. Every day, in every city in America, you can pick up a sports page and read about something that happened the day before that was not supposed to happen.”

Outperform your contract. Don’t do something until you get it right, do it until you cannot get it wrong. Are you willing to give up what you want now for what you want most later?

So the energy that you’re bringing, is it contagious? Of course it is. The question is is it worth catching? Or is it worth avoiding?

“When visualizing, one starts by imagining and accepting all the sensations and emotions of a competition - the smell of freshly cut grass, the touch of the wind and the trees and the sun or rain, to deafening crowd noise or silence, and the butterflies (that feel more like bees or hornets).”

It was the great Vince Lombardi, Jr. that said “gentleman, we will chase perfection, and we will chase it relentlessly, knowing all the while we can never attain it. But along the way, we shall catch excellence.”