“Whatever you do in life, have the courage and commitment to do it to your absolute best.” - Pat Summitt
Not halfway effort.
Not excuses.
Not “good enough.”
The courage to show up.
The commitment to stay with it.
That’s where excellence lives.
Rick Pitino is right.
Every player’s hourglass runs out faster than they think.
The practices. The games. The grind.
One day… it’s all gone.
Cherish every rep. Every moment. Every opportunity.
Don’t waste your sand. ⏳
John Harbaugh using getting fired by the Ravens as past of his commencement speech Saturday at Miami University.
Really great message overall on
the "amazing powers of caring and encouragement." Gives you some insight into how he handles himself as a coach.
"Challenge yourself with ideas that are uncomfortable and people who push you to be your very best, even if one of those people is a cranky old coach who cuts the sleeves off his sweatshirt and screams at you all day."
- Tom Brady
KOBE BRYANT’S 10 RULES:
Get better every single day
Prove them wrong
Work on your weaknesses
Execute what you practiced
Learn from greatness
Learn from both wins and losses
Practice mindfulness
Be ambitious
Believe in your team/yourself
Learn storytelling
Coaches who only correct never connect.
“Negative experiences without teaching kill morale.” - Nick Saban
The hard moment isn’t the problem.
Leaving it without a lesson is.
That’s what transformational coaching actually looks like.
Mike Tomlin shares the #1 tool every leader needs and the notecard that sits on his desk.
"One of the number one tools that we have is listening."
"As leaders, we gotta continually listen. We gotta continually be open to new and different ideas that might be different than ours - that might move us and the group that we lead forward."
Then he revealed something powerful:
"I have a notecard that's on the corner of my desk that says, 'Listening is a skill.'"
"I leave it on the corner of my desk because I want to remind myself that things that are skill-related - you better continually acknowledge."
"You can work at it and get better. You can also get worse."
Skills don't stay sharp on their own. They require attention.
"It's like swinging a golf club. It's a skill-related thing."
"I try to treat listening with the same level of respect. I want to continually work at it and hone my talents in that area."
"Part of good leadership is being open to ideas and understanding that great ideas and innovative thought oftentimes comes from those that you lead."
"That's something I'm always working at. I challenge other leaders to do the same."
Listening isn't passive. It's a skill you sharpen or lose.
The best leaders never stop working at it.
(🎥 L3 Leadership Podcast)
Kobe Bryant: "Failure doesn't exist, it's a figment of your imagination"
An interviewer asks: "Are you someone who loves to win or hates to lose?"
Kobe responds:
"I'm neither. I play to figure things out. I play to learn something. Because if you play with a fear of failure or you play with the will to win that supersedes fear, I think it's a weakness either way. If you play with fear of failing, you'll capitulate to that fear. If you play with the sense of 'I want to win, I want to win,' then you have the fear of what happens if you don't. But if you find common ground in the center, you're unfazed by either. That enables you to stay in the moment and not feel anything other than what's in front of you."
The interviewer asks: "How did you become someone who doesn't seem afraid of failing?"
Kobe responds:
"What does failure mean? It doesn't exist. It's a figment of your imagination."
He explains with an analogy:
"Let's use happy endings. Everybody wants a happy ending, right? Snow White finds her prince and lives happily ever after. Well, I call BS on that because two months later, they had an argument and he's sleeping on the couch. The point is: the story continues. So if you fail on Monday, the only way it's a failure is if you decide to not progress from that. If I fail today, I'm going to learn something from that failure and try again on Tuesday. That's why failure doesn't exist."
The interviewer asks: "If you finished your career without a championship, would you have looked at that as a failure?"
Kobe:
"No. I would look at it as being extremely disappointed, because I had a dream and goals I wanted to accomplish. If I didn't accomplish those goals, I'd have to ask myself why. Poor leadership? Failure to communicate with my teammates? Lack of preparation? Those would be reasons why I didn't win. So I'd have to analyze that. And as I evolved post-basketball into business, those same weaknesses would reveal themselves there too. If I don't learn from that, I'm going to struggle again."
He concludes:
"I can take those situations and learn from them and have them make me a better person later in life. But if I don't take that stuff and apply it someplace else, that's failing. The worst possible thing you can ever do is to stop. It's to not learn."
Hard coaching means someone believes in you and your ability to improve.
Great players don’t see it as an attack. They see it as the ultimate compliment.