As a competitor in any field, it is critical to maintain your edge for the battlefield. As Ralph Marston said, “Excellence is not a skill, it is an attitude.” Your competitive mindset is the secret ingredient to keeping your edge sharp on the playing field. Putting in the mental and physical work is a must and the proper mindset inspires competitors to prepare with the proper intensity.
Top Ten Ways to a Warrior Mindset:
- To achieve greatness, you must forget greatness and be great in the process. As successes mount, concentrate on the process that was necessary to reach that point. It will be the action steps in the process that will allow further growth. To reach great heights you must not think of the destination but be great in the action steps required.
- Have a passion for good and do good with a passion. To reach the pinnacle of your profession you must have a strong desire to be good. In addition to that desire competitors at the top of their field work enthusiastically to get there.
- Success is not what you do for a living — success is how you live what you do! Take what you do for a living and live what you do with no regrets. Whatever your Game Day is, play with heart. The world is full of champions who don’t have a championship ring or trophy. The phrase, “play with heart” is used often but not always understood. Heart is the emotional aspect of one’s innermost character and courage. Great is the strength of mind and will that faces difficulties. Regardless what your Game Day is, we can all be champions in the game of life with Heart!
- Most competitors can give their best in battle once. It takes a real warrior to do it again and again. This is where many competitors fail. Giving your best in the competitive arena again and again builds the consistency necessary to become a champion. Giving your best doesn’t necessarily mean you will set personal records daily. It does ensure you will be the best you can be for that day or that battle.
- You must go to the edge to take that leap beyond! When you stay in your comfort zone there is no room to grow. Staying in your comfort zone is like sitting in your car with the transmission in park expecting to reach a new destination. It’s important to continually push yourself to your edge. It is beyond your comfort zone where you will find a glorious world you never knew existed.
- A 100% effort means using every fiber of body, mind, and soul to complete your mission. To get the most out of yourself you should consider your job or task at hand as a mission. A mission is defined as an operation or task assigned by a higher authority. Colossians 3:23, “Whatever you do, work at it with all your heart.” With that in mind, a 100% effort means using every fiber of body, mind, and soul to complete your mission. To do that you must:
- Train properly by taking care of your body.
- Continue the education needed to perform your task.
- Refine and discipline specific actions necessary to succeed in your role.
- Stay positive in all work circumstances and maintain a pleasant disposition to your teammates or anyone you interact with on that task.
- Accept responsibility for attaining your goals.
- Understand that anything worthwhile is never the easy road. It is always the hard road.
- Know that this road is less traveled, and it is on the journey itself you work to acquiring fulfillment!
- What is behind you and what is ahead of you is not nearly as important as what is within you. Whether your previous battle was positive or negative, a successful competitor stays in the moment and focuses full efforts on the immediate. Dwelling on the past prevents you from moving forward. Thinking too much of the future can also cloud your vision and soften your armor for the present battle.
- To get the most out of yourself, you must have strength and purpose. Compete with meaningful purpose. Not only for a tangible goal but for something bigger. It’s your heart and soul’s desire. It’s the substance of all dreams. Life is filled with competition, adversity, detours, twists and turns – a roller coaster of emotions. Our souls are hungry for something larger than ourselves. We are hungry to be part of something that has meaning. Hungry to make a difference in a positive fashion. We don’t have to have an impact globally, we need only to make a difference in our own, small world. Pour your heart out with effort – not only to find joy despite difficulties, but in the midst of them.
- Success is not a destination, success is a choice! Success is a choice made over and over again in the secret place of the mind called “the will”. One of my favorite quotes is from Muhammad Ali: The battle first takes place away from the crowds. Out on the road and in the gym, in that secret place of the mind called the will. That is where I have already won. Long before I dance under those lights. A well-known clergyman also said, Someday you will be wrestling with a great challenge. But the real struggle is here in the quiet times. Now it is being decided whether on the day of your supreme challenge, battle, sorrow, temptation, or game you shall miserably fail or gloriously conquer. Champions are made through a long, steady, continued process.
- Find Joy in the Process! A process is a series of action steps necessary to reach a destination or attain a goal. Champions learn to find joy in the process. The definition of joy is the passion or emotion excited by the acquisition of good. Find Your Joy!
Twenty years as an NFL coach and member of a Super Bowl Championship team provided a perspective on leadership that few people experience.
Over the course of his almost thirty-five-year football career, Bob Slowik taught leadership and motivation, while experiencing first-hand what it takes to face and conquer competition.
On his national speaking tour, he shares these lessons on mindset development and how to harness passion to achieve objectives. These messages not only resonate with athletes and other coaches; but with professionals in the business community who contend with challenges daily.
Founder of Coach Slow’s Land of Xs, Os & Beyond; developer of a boot camp-style leadership web clinic, NFLLeadership.com; author of Sixty Minutes to a Lifetime: Lessons I’ve Learned About Life and Football from My NFL Coaching Career; and educator with one-on-one coaching sessions for other coaches, Bob Slowik offers support and guidance for anyone with a game day to face.
Get to know Coach Slow on CoachSlow.com or email schedulecoachslow@coachslow.com for information on his lecture series and to book him to speak.
